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  • Blog
    • Recent Posts
    • Chirping with ABA Owls
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Recent Posts

The Hoot Chronicles XIX – The Checklist Manifesto

October 18, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Hello everyone,

This episode of The Hoot Chronicles came out on 17th October and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

Every month, we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – For this episode, we moved away from autism, went into the medical field and covered The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande


About the author

Dr. Gawande is a surgeon, writer and public health leader. He is currently serving under the Biden-Harris administration as Assistant Administrator of Global Health Development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

There is a quite vast list of accomplishments, which you are welcome to read about in Wikipedia or on his website: http://atulgawande.com/ (but just as a warning, when I opened this last website, it said the connection was not protected). 


Who should read this book?

Anyone. The way the book is written allows it to reach pretty much every reader in the world.


What is covered in the book?

Through his own experiences, Dr Gawande shows us how checklists are important in a variety of contexts and how he brought them into his own practice as a surgeon.
The book explores how situations as complex as flying a plane, building an edifice and performing surgery, can be aided by a checklist. This is not to say that checklists are perfect, as anything, they can be flawed. However, it is important to carry on perfecting them so they can support people. Even though the book delves into the use of checklists in a professional environment, they can be used by anyone in any setting.

Dr Gawade discusses how he worked on a project with WHO (World Health Organisation) on developing a surgery checklist that could be used on a global scale – I’m not sure if they had a behaviour analyst on this project, but from reading the book, probably not.
They tested the checklist in 8 different hospitals across the world in rich, poor and middle class environments. After 3 months of the pilot study starting, nearly all hospitals reported that the checklist helped them correct errors in procedures, prevent errors from occurring and deaths from surgeries decreased by 47% !
At the end of the trial period, they asked the people who used the checklist to fill out an anonymous survey. 80% of the people surveyed found the checklist easy to use, 20% didn’t. But when asked “if you were having this operation, would you want the checklist used?” and 93% said yes! Social Validity – super important in ABA!

The book highlights a few key features a checklist should have: Pause points (when the checks happen), Communication (aka teams talking to each other) and focusing on important and critical steps (as opposed to going through every single little one).

The book also explains how they perfected the checklist for the surgical setting – revising what was needed to stay, keeping it brief, quick and efficient, simulating situations and training staff.


Where can you get the book?

Physical book
Ebay: £ 4.43
Amazon: £8.18
Book Depository: £8.18
Blackwell: £8.18
AbeBooks: £3.74 (not including shipping)
World of Books: £4.19
Waterstones: £9.99

Online version
Apple Books: $10.99
Audible: £19.99
Not found in: Google books (only a sample).


Extra Resources and Links

https://www.who.int/news/item/11-12-2010-checklist-helps-reduce-surgical-complications-deaths

https://www.who.int/news/item/04-12-2015-who-checklist-targets-major-causes-of-maternal-and-newborn-deaths-in-health-facilities

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119


We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Recent Posts, season 3, The Hoot Chronicles

Season 3, Episode 2 – The Witching Hour

October 7, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Welcome!

On the ABA Owls podcast episode for October, we’re visiting the supernatural again! In case you’d like to listen, you can go to our podcast page or use your preferred podcast app and search “Chirping with ABA Owls” – we’re on iTunes, Podbean and other platforms.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, carry on with this post.


A Brief Summary

Witches have been a subject of fascination and fear for centuries, and we find it very interesting to discuss the behaviours of people around them. Our analysis or opinions are dependent on the information available – usually in behaviour analysis you have to observe the behaviour. This means that our comments and their accuracy have limitations due to the lack of first hand observation.


What is Witchcraft and Who were Witches?

Most people are probably aware of the prosecution of women in North America, labelling them witches.
Quite often it gets compared to what happened in Europe, but truth be told, in Europe it was more about the church and the inquisition obtaining power – even though women were more likely to be trialled and killed, a lot of men and children were also killed.
This was a way to obtain that family’s possessions – being labelled a witch was probably the fastest way to dispose of someone.

It is fair to say that throughout the centuries and millennia we’ve seen humans demonstrating a certain pattern when it comes to the unknown – they destroy it. When people fear what they don’t know, they are more likely to destroy it rather than understand it.

Many women labelled witches were people with more understanding of plants, ointments, and remedies. They were able to help others by using science (or, the closest they had at the time). When the people who were supposed to be the healers were outdone by people who were not the “official” or the “proper” healers, it certainly created tension. Probably the fear of losing their power made them act out to destroy the ones who could take their power and control.


Why

Why were witches persecuted? A lot of historians and experts will say there was mass hysteria, that people were reading all sorts of information about witches and would act on it. If you ever read any of the witch trials testimonies, you will notice the complete ABSENCE of evidence. Even the circumstantial evidence was a joke – for today’s standards.
The first woman recorded to die due to a witchcraft trial was Bridget Bishop – some of the statements from her trial are: “several people testified against Bishop, stating that the shape of Bishop would pinch, choke or bite them […] during the trial, any time Bishop would look upon one of her accusers, they would be immediately struck down and only her touch would revive them” (from the wikipedia page).

We laugh now, but the same behaviour is seen on social media. The witch hunt, not just on women now, it feels as if everyone is always on trial. Evidence seems to be useless for the general public, and a clickbait video is enough to convince them they have learned everything about the situation, and that they are well informed. 

Luckily, trial and law proceedings have evolved quite a lot since, and even though it’s not perfect it’s much better than it was in the past. 
We have the resources and ability to research and make smart, evidence based decisions – but this seems irrelevant in many situations. Whether it is how they judge others via social media, or how they teach children.


How

How do witches relate to ABA?

It’s all about behaviour! We are well aware that there are other factors involved, such as the brain’s reaction to fear, how we react to protect ourselves, etc.  There are many behaviours to unpick, so we will discuss people’s fear of witches.

Why and how did the fear of witches develop? The why of it all, in our opinion, was because there were people who wanted to maintain their power and their status. Having women who could be their competition would take away that power, and it was not acceptable to them. Turning the general population against these “witches” was the fastest way to get people to avoid them, and by executing them it serves as an example of the consequences of defying their power and authority.

What behaviours were involved in this? Quite a lot. From mouth to mouth inaccurate information spreading, to publishing books about witches, to creating false witness accounts, etc.
If we look back at the quote mentioned earlier, regarding Bridget Bishop’s trial, “any time Bishop would look upon one of her accusers, they would be immediately struck down and only her touch would revive them” – essentially, all that was needed was to make eye contact with her, throw themselves onto the floor, and when they felt her touch them (she was probably physically forced to) all they had to do was open their eyes and get up. This is all behaviour – all of it are actions people choose to have. Why the “witnesses” choose to act this way, we don’t know. They could’ve been coerced into false accounts to prevent being punished themselves? We have no way of knowing. 

But this fear of witches is not just the fight or flight response in action – it’s active behaviour with the purpose of shaping other people’s behaviour into making other people believe in something. It’s actively taking action against something or someone.

We are aware that some people believe in witchcraft, the same way some people believe in catholicism, buddhism, etc, we are not saying it doesn’t exist. What we are saying is that a lot of work (and actions) were taken into having the fear of witches spread across the world.


End Thoughts

We love a witch and are fascinated by the topic – if you’d like to hear more comments from us, you are welcome to listen to the podcast episode.


Resources and Links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft_Suppression_Act,_1957

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Bishop

Witches, Midwives and Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

The Crucible (1996)


We hope you’ve enjoyed this post (and the podcast episode, if you’ve listened to it). 

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Recent Posts, season 3

The Hoot Chronicles XVIII – ABA and Dementia

September 19, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Hello everyone,

This episode of The Hoot Chronicles came out on 19th September and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

Every month, we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – For this episode, we delve into a study done on needle phobia. Most specifically: Increasing activity attendance and engagement in individuals with dementia using descriptive prompts.

This study was published in 2008 and we will add the links for it at the end of this post. 


About the authors

There are 4 authors, all from Saint Cloud State University. We will give you a bit of information on the first author, Shasta Breske.

Breske’s experience ranges from implementing early intervention ABA services at the Croyden Avenue School to being a leader of multidisciplinary patient care teams, and acting as state director of a national network of health and human services providers. 
In 2017 she established Bright Behaviour, Inc. which serves and supports children ages 2-7 diagnosed with Autism, Down syndrome., and developmental delays.
You can find out more on their website: https://brightbehaviorinc.com 


What is the topic?

It is a journal article to demonstrate the research conducted to assess whether people with dementia  will increase their attendance and engagement in activities if these activities are described to them.


Who should read this article?

A wide range of people and professionals could benefit from reading this article – anyone who supports people with dementia (carers, nurses, family members, etc.).

The article does have some ABA jargon but it’s still understandable for people who are not in the ABA field.


Where can you get the article?

There are various online platforms, such as google scholar, wiley library, research gate, etc. You can find this article on the National Library of Medicine and Research Gate.


We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Chirping with ABA Owls, Recent Posts, season 3, The Hoot Chronicles

Season 3, Episode 1 – PECS II

September 5, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Welcome!

On the ABA Owls podcast episode for September, we’ve decided to return to the topic of PECS. In case you’d like to listen, you can go to our podcast page or use your preferred podcast app and search “Chirping with ABA Owls” – we’re on iTunes, Podbean and other platforms.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, carry on with this post.


A brief summary

PECS was developed in the U.S.A. in 1985 by Andy Bondy and Lori Frost. Dr. Bondy is an innovative leader in the field of autism and applied behaviour analysis and has directed a statewide public school system for students with autism for fourteen years. 

Lori Frost is vice-president and co-founder of Pyramid Educational Consultants. Ms Frost has a wealth of background in functional communication training and applied behaviour analysis and has assisted in the development of a number of training packages designed to teach language and academic skills.

If you would like to hear more about the history of PECS, and the whys and hows, feel free to listen to our episode from November 2020.


PECS and ABA

The more we learn about PECS, the more we notice how much ABA is ingrained into it. 

PECS looks into:

  1. Functional objectives – teaches learners the skills they need for when they leave school, and emphasise the importance of independence.
  2. Powerful reinforcement systems – what is rewarding for learners and to be aware of the changes over time. As we say in the ABA field, motivation is fluid, it evolves and changes over time. Being mindful of this and being able to adapt, allows us to effectively reinforce our clients with stimuli they actually like.
  3. Communication and social skills – this section of the training manual is based on the work of B.F. Skinner in his book Verbal Behavior from 1957.
  4. Preventing and reducing inappropriate behaviours – they have a different way of describing it, but it is essentially looking at the function of the behaviour. Gain access to reinforcement or items (tangible), escape or avoid activities or tasks (avoidance or escape).
  5. Generalisation – is paramount and throughout the course it focused a lot on where the skill is going and how it is going to benefit the learner in their growth towards independence. Generalisation is planned early on, just like it is done in ABA (or how it should be done).
  6. Prompting – PECS uses four levels of prompting: verbal, gestural, modelling and physical prompts. As any ABA practitioner will tell you, they use the same type of prompting.
  7. 4-step error correction procedure – similar to ABA error correction and they use it when teaching communication, requests and other skills. PECS is not just about asking for things, it’s also about other forms of communication across the verbal operants.
  8. Collecting and analysing data – they collect data on their learner’s progress and use it to make necessary changes.
  9. Verbal Operants – written by Andy Bondy, it goes through pre-requisite skills and how PECS and verbal operants work together.

If you’d like to hear some of the examples we discuss within each area, feel free to listen to our episode.


End Thoughts

We find PECS to be a well set up system, organised in a way that teaches people to communicate effectively and in a functional manner.

We highly recommend doing the PECS courses, which you can access online – have a look at their website https://pecs.com/ and select your region.


We hope you’ve enjoyed this post (and the podcast episode, if you’ve listened to it). 

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Chirping with ABA Owls, Recent Posts, season 3

The Hoot Chronicles XVII – The Power of Character Strengths

July 18, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Hello everyone,

This is our last Hoots for this season and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

As you might know by now, every month we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – It’s not always ABA themed but it will be behaviour related.
This time Carla is discussing The Power of Character Strengths by Ryan Niemec and Robert McGrath.


What is the topic?

This book is a good introduction into what strengths are – it categorises our personality not into types, but into virtues and strengths. Each Strength belongs to a type of virtue and the authors use WH-questions to explain What each strength is, Why is it important and How do we use it.


Who should read this book?

Anyone interested in personality traits and improving themselves will probably enjoy this book.


Contents

This book comes from the VIA institute, which was founded in the U.S. – the creators divided personality into strengths instead of types, as mentioned above. 
Anyone can take their 24 strengths survey for free on their website.

The book is divided into 3 parts: introduction, discussing the 24 strengths and building up your strengths. 
They’ve divided the strengths within 6 different virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance and Transcendence. There is also an explanation  as to why these are the virtues.
Within each virtue there are strengths assigned – for example, within Humanity you have Love, Kindness and Social intelligence.
The last chapter, the strength builder, is very self reflective. It has a few tables and writing exercises with the purpose of making you think about your strengths, how you use them, where else you could utilise them and applying them to life challenges. 

Something I want everyone to understand is that this book is one of MANY resources offered by the VIA institute. I first came across the survey and then the book.


Impressions 

We do discuss the book in more detail on the podcast episode, but we will leave you with some of our comments below. 

When you take the survey, be advised that it relies a lot on your perception of yourself. If you view yourself as a brave person, you probably will get that character strength. We think it would’ve been beneficial to have some questions about the actions a person has had in the past and what actions they want to have in the future. 

It’s normal that your strengths change over time, because we are constantly changing, learning – or at least, we should be. If you take the survey once a year (or every 2 years, etc.) you might notice that your strengths will show some variances.


We would’ve liked some of the research mentioned to be referenced – throughout the book, the phrase “research finds” keeps popping up, but no actual research or studies are mentioned.

The website does have plenty of resources, not just books, but also activities, webinars, workshops, etc. Maybe one of those resources will have more guidance on how to develop each particular strength. 

Nevertheless, I would still recommend taking the survey and reading more about each character strength. I found it to be a really good way to work on yourself.


Where can you get the book?

Disclaimer: the prices might have changed since the time this post was published or the podcast episode recorded.

Physical book
Ebay: £ 16.99
Amazon £18.77
AbeBooks: £15.22
World of Books: £16.79
Not found in: Blackwell, Book Depository nor Waterstones

Online version
Apple books: £16.99
Audible: £16.09
Not found in: Google Books


Extra Resources

https://www.viacharacter.org/pdf/340%20Ways%20by%20Tayyab%20Rashid.pdf

https://www.viacharacter.org/


We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Chirping with ABA Owls, Recent Posts, Season 2, The Hoot Chronicles

Season 2, Episode 10 – Training Staff: New Staff Member

July 4, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Welcome!

On the ABA Owls podcast episode for July, we revisit our Training Staff Series and go through some ABA guidance on training new staff members. In case you’d like to listen, you can go to our podcast page or use your preferred podcast app and search “Chirping with ABA Owls” – we’re on iTunes, Podbean and other platforms.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, carry on with this post.


Where do you start?

When a new employee joins, they will need more attention – which means that your focus will have to shift from other tasks (e.g., supporting other staff members). We understand every job is different, but we can use the same measures across different settings.  

Planning your time can make a massive difference in your day, but the biggest difficulty people seem to have has been to keep it simple. Truth be told, we are guilty of striving for doing as much as possible in one day – we advise you to think of the quote “Less is More”. The first written recording of this quote is from an 1855 poem, but it’s still the best approach you can have. 

This doesn’t mean we are advising you to do less things, but to make your tasks achievable. It is quite punishing or disheartening to have a to-do list for a day and not be able to complete it. And you are less likely to even want to write a list and attempt to complete it if you have been unsuccessful previously.

What do we mean by “Planning”? Planning can be having a checklist of the behaviours the new employee needs to learn. Planning can be discussing a backup plan with your superior in case you are not available to train. Planning can be setting aside time for that new employee and stick to it as much as possible. 

Checklists are actually much more powerful than what people believe. They can be a great source of support in helping you remember all the steps you have to follow or what you need to do to achieve a task. They can also track where you are and where you are going.

We discuss more practical examples on the podcast episode. 


Start training.

This brings us to training. You’ve done all this planning and now you have to train someone. 

Keep these four questions in mind:
1) WHAT do they need training on?
2) WHAT is the priority?
3) HOW should we train?
4) HOW do we consider the skill learned?

1) WHAT do they need training on? This is something that the aforementioned checklist would help with. Every job has different work behaviours. 

2) WHAT is the priority? It’s important to prioritise, this can also be done at the planning level. However, exercise FLEXIBILITY and realistic aims. New needs might come up, there might be an unexpected new project, or there might be a new pupil joining the class or you might get a new client, etc etc. So, the level of importance of each work behaviour might shift based on day-to-day events. 

3) How should we train? In our Training staff introduction episode (season 2 episode 5), we mentioned an article that discussed different training methods.

In our field, there is something called BST (stands for Behavioural Skills Training) – this training procedure uses both verbal training and role playing. Verbal (or Vocal) instruction is given to the trainee, which can be in the form of a lecture, videos for around 15/20 minutes, followed by role playing where the work behaviour is demonstrated to the trainee.
During role play, it is also important for the staff to try and execute the work behaviour – there are various studies that have shown the efficiency of role play. But if you don’t believe us, just think about yourself when you start a new job. When did you learn a skill properly? When someone said “you do this and that” or when you actually had to do it? Understanding what works for each person could also help in training someone more effectively. 

4) How do we consider the skill mastered? Or when is someone competent at performing the target skill? The time spent in role playing is when you can assess if the skill is learned or if it needs more practice. To be clear, when we say role play, we don’t mean that you spend HOURS doing it but rather how skilled is the staff member at completing this skill correctly and with satisfaction.  


Fading in demands and Maintaining skill repertoire.

Fade in demands – If an employee is displaying the work behaviours necessary to master that part of training, progress with training, slowly adding more responsibilities.
This will help the new employee with being more successful in mastering each step.  They will also start feeling more confident as you systematically and slowly add more steps, so that each skill is well developed and fluently demonstrated. 

Maintenance – This is an important part of any work-based skill or any skill. If you don’t practice the target behaviours you will either lose the skill or forget how to do it. If you practise it or maintain it by performing it regularly, you are less likely to forget it.
Once in a while you can (and potentially should) check if the work skill is being performed correctly, but be mindful not to come across as condescending or overbearing. People can react negatively when they feel their superiors don’t trust them.
An approach we can recommend is to explain to the staff member that it is part of the company’s policy to do these checks, and that everyone goes through them, even managers. This is to ensure people are keeping their work skills.


End Thoughts

Training is a topic that is quite exciting for us, as we enjoy seeing people understand and apply skills to their work and personal life.

We find that using ABA can make people’s lives easier – the measures you put in place now will support you in the future.
Think about where you are now and where you want to be – ABA will help you prepare the steps between those two stages (the now and the future).


We hope you’ve enjoyed this post (and the podcast episode, if you’ve listened to it).
We are having a break and will be back in September!

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Chirping with ABA Owls, Recent Posts, Season 2, Training Staff series

The Hoot Chronicles XVI – Pill Swallowing

June 20, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Hello everyone,

This is June’s episode of The Hoot Chronicles and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

Every month, we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – For this episode, Lauren will take us through an article called: Behavioral training for pill-swallowing difficulties in young children with autisitic disorder by Ghuman, Cataldo, Beck and Slifer. It was published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology and is from 2004. 


What is the topic?

This study targeted the increase of pill swallowing behaviours in children aged 5 years old and upwards.


Who should read this article?

Anyone who works in the field of behavioural analysis, people who work with individuals with ASD, parents who need advice on how to encourage pill swallowing and other professionals and carers.


Contents

The therapists who ran the study used multiple teaching strategies to teach these children to swallow pills, which included instructions, modelling, gestural prompts, physical prompts and visual aids (a small poster with an actual example of each of the increasingly larger practice pills).
They (the therapists) gradually moved through the different sizes based on a set criteria of mastery, when they were confidently able to swallow pills of a certain size they would move to a bigger size pill. The child would receive reinforcement after successfully swallowing the pill. 

If you’re curious about extra comments on this article, you can always listen here.


Where can you get the article?

There are various online platforms, such as google scholar, wiley library, research gate, etc. 

We found this particular article in the research gate website and in the National Library of Medicine. 

Ghuman, J. K., Cataldo, M. D., Beck, M. H. & Slifer, K. J. (2004). Behavioral Training for Pill-Swallowing Difficulties in Young Children with Autistic Disorder. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 14(4), 601-11. doi:10.1089/cap.2004.14.601


We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Recent Posts, Season 2, The Hoot Chronicles, Uncategorized

Season 2, Episode 8 – Guess What I’m Thinking

May 2, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Welcome!

For this month’s Owls podcast episode, we discussed overt and covert behaviours. In case you’d like to listen, you can go to our podcast page or use your preferred podcast app and search “Chirping with ABA Owls” – we’re on iTunes, Podbean and other platforms.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, carry on with this post.


What are Overt and Covert behaviours?

Let’s start with some definitions.
Overt behaviour, which we can also call “actions” is  “Behaviour that can be observed by someone other than the person performing it” (Chance 1998, p.7)
Covert behaviour, or private event, is described as “behaviour that can be observed only by the person performing it”. (Chance 1998, p.7)

Skinner did consider thoughts to be important, but as he couldn’t measure them, it was harder to use it in a scientific manner. There have been many people misinterpreting Skinner’s views on feelings, thoughts and psychology. Here’s part of an article that combined Skinner’s views with the criticism he received: “Skinner (1956) himself opposed attempts to restrict scientific practice with preconceived rules or maxims. When placed in historical context, Skinner did not criticize neuroscience, he criticized the misuse of pseudo-physiological theories in the explanation of behavior. In addition, Skinner assumed that many questions about behavior, from the mechanisms of reinforcement and motivation to perceptual processes and private events, would be at least in part explained by neuroscience (Zilio 2013a).” (Zilio 2016)

In ABA we work with what we can see, the actions an individual performs – but that doesn’t mean we should ignore what the person might be thinking and feeling.
With thoughts and feelings, we enter a dicey and tricky area sometimes. There is quite a lot of debate on what is considered to be behaviour and what is not. For example, not all behaviour analysts take into account the importance of private events, the same way not all psychologists consider thoughts to be behaviour.
Honestly, we aren’t even touching that because there’s no point in starting a whole discussion. Bottom line is, we all perform actions and we all have thoughts and feelings. 

Since covert behaviour can’t be seen, there is a tendency for it to not be considered as important in ABA – but there are a lot of professionals changing this approach. Just because a person doesn’t convey their feelings, doesn’t mean they don’t have them. This can be especially hard for autistic people, and if you add an inability to speak or the inability to express yourself well into the mix, you can potentially have a recipe for challenging behaviour. 


Where and When do they occur?

Both covert and overt behaviour happen all the time and everywhere. Anything can trigger actions and thoughts: things we see around us, things we remember, smells, sounds etc. 

In ABA we say that behaviour doesn’t come from air, and that is true, but we think people should consider that thoughts can also cause behaviour.
We’ve all heard the expression “train of thought”, and we’ve all experienced remembering an event because something else triggered it. We can be talking about a flower we saw, and the other person listening to us can then think of a memory associated with flowers, that is associated with something else and so on. This train of thought can put us in a good or a bad mood, or have no impact on us. 

We know that in ABA we don’t use terminology such as “good” or “bad” mood, because it’s hard to measure and it’s not an accurate definition, but they are terms that the majority of people will understand. We shouldn’t ignore how these thoughts can influence our behaviour – just because a person is not able to communicate their emotions and mood, doesn’t mean that those feelings are not occurring. 

Think about your behaviour when you are trying to fall asleep. You’re lying in bed, the room is dark, the bed feels comfortable and your to-do list for tomorrow pops up in your mind! That alone can trigger other thoughts and memories, and slowly you lose sleep. What prompted this? It wasn’t anything around you, it was simply a thought you had.
But what happens between remembering your to-do list and losing sleep? You think about the actions you need to do to perform your tasks, you think about the level of difficulty those actions require, that alone can be quite demanding. 

Personally, we think thoughts and behaviours are connected. Just because we can help someone change their behaviour, doesn’t mean we’ve changed their thoughts and feelings. To change the latter, you need a different skill set and procedures.


How do these behaviours occur?

How do we identify covert and overt behaviour? Overt behaviour is easier, it can be seen, observed, measured. Overt behaviour is where behaviour analysts are very comfortable as they are able to observe and determine a function or a reason behind the behaviour, this way they may be able to help that person find another way to get their needs met without having to do it in 

Covert behaviour is so much harder because only the person experiencing these events knows if they are real or not. Maybe in the future we will be able to measure them – for example, using brain scans that light up when someone lies. Maybe that technology already exists, but it’s not available for the masses at the moment. 

For now, we work with what we got: overt behaviour. The way ABA professionals attempt to understand covert behaviour with their clients is by using things tools such as interviews, preference assessments, providing choice, etc. We do try to fill that gap as much as possible, but it can be difficult. 


Why do these behaviours occur?

It’s important to understand the difference between these two types of behaviours, because it will affect how we react to others behaviours. What can happen quite a lot is that people will associate certain behaviours with emotions and feelings, and make assumptions about it. 

Here’s a situation we do come across quite regularly: We go to a client’s school and ask “why do you think he/she doesn’t sit at the table to do work?” and they will reply “because they feel anxious about work”.
We enquiry further by asking “how do you know? Have they said work makes them anxious?”, to which a lot of the time people will reply  “no, but we can tell because he/she gets very distressed during class”.

They’ve associated behaviours that they call “distressed” with “anxiety” without having any way of confirming it. And yes, potentially school work might make the person feel anxious, but it can be equally true that they are using their behaviour to escape doing work – and they do this because it has shown results, that is, escaping school tasks. It can happen that the work is too hard and if the student displays problem behaviour, the work is then removed so they are able to avoid it.
A lot of people will be able to understand and relate to this, we avoid situations that are too difficult and unpleasant, we may not have problem behaviour to such a disruptive level but we will use other behaviours, e.g.saying we have a headache. 

We can’t ignore the possibility of anxiety, but in ABA, as we mentioned, it’s harder to work with what we can’t see. This is when ABA could benefit from contributing with psychologists, and develop an intervention that can support the person as best as possible. These collaborations already exist but maybe they need to happen more frequently.


End Thoughts and Resources

Learning and adapting is something that can be celebrated, we are fortunate in having the means to be able to explore and learn, this wasn’t a possibility in many other generations.

As we move forward in the human behaviour field, learning what best suits our clients and ourselves, learning to be more aware of our own behaviours – how they are influenced by others and our environment – the better we will be at adapting and improving as people.

For this episode and blog post, we used the following resources:
– Chance, P 1998, First Course in Applied Behavior Analysis, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, U.S.A.

– Zillo, D. (2016). Who, What and When: Skinner’s Critiques of Neuroscience and His Main Targets. Association for Behaviour Analysts International, 39 (2), 197-218. doi: 10.1007/s40614-016-0053-x


We hope you’ve enjoyed this post (and the podcast episode, if you’ve listened to it).

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: ABA and the World, Chirping with ABA Owls, Recent Posts, Season 2

Season 2, Episode 7 – Training Staff: Reinforcement and MO

April 11, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Welcome!

For our April podcast episode, we discussed staff reinforcement and motivation (MO). In case you’d like to listen, you can go to our podcast page or use your preferred podcast app and search “Chirping with ABA Owls” – we’re on iTunes, Podbean and other platforms.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, carry on with this post.


What is Reinforcement and MO?

We do love a definition, here are some that we found helpful:

1 – “Reinforcement involves consequences that strengthen behaviour. To strengthen a behaviour means to increase the likelihood that it will occur again in the future”. From Beam ABA services

2- “Reinforcement is the backbone of the entire field of applied behavior analysis (ABA)”. From www.appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org

In terms of ABA and working with our clients, we strive to assess exactly what reinforces their behaviour, therefore reinforcement is personalised and depends on the individual. 

Not everyone is good at telling you what they like or what they are motivated for. Even if they have excellent communication skills and are able to clearly tell you their preferences, it doesn’t mean they will.

It is important to bear in mind that just because someone prefers something, doesn’t mean that will reinforce their behaviour. Something becomes a reinforcer when it increases the target behaviour. 


For example, imagine that a staff member prefers to have a longer lunch break, but that the target behaviour is getting the staff member to arrive on time for meetings. Giving them a longer lunch break, won’t necessarily increase the behaviour of arriving on time for meetings. What if the meeting is after lunch? 

You need to make sure if what you are supplying is appropriate for the behaviour you want to increase and if it actually reinforces people’s behaviour – that is, it increases the behaviour. 

Now onto motivation and how it works with reinforcement – we need to know what people are motivated for in order to reinforce them appropriately. 

Here’s another definition: “Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. Motivation involves the biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that activate behavior. In everyday usage, the term “motivation” is frequently used to describe why a person does something”- www.verywellmind.com

We need to fully understand what motivates people and how we can use that to reinforce the behaviours we want to increase.


Where and When to Reinforce

Time and place can be hard to choose.
We used to work in an organisation that would praise staff with a certificate during the weekly meeting but even with the best intentions, this might not be the ideal scenario for everyone.
Some people feel uncomfortable having attention thrown towards them, so they might not find the “reinforcer” actually reinforcing. The certificate worked as a tangible and social reinforcer, and would highlight a particular behaviour the staff member had engaged in.
Another facet of this weekly “reinforcer” is that it became expected –  every week there had to be one staff member selected from each team. This causes the “reinforcer” to lose its value and strength, as staff can become satiated.
We also didn’t take any data on whether giving the certificate would increase a particular work behaviour – we can’t really call it a reinforcer if we don’t know its effects.

Assessing Preferences
First off, assessment of what staff members prefer should be done regularly. Motivation fluctuates and changes all the time, sometimes we want to do something, other times we want to do something else and we are influenced by our experiences. Assuming that your staff will always want the same reinforcer is a mistake and it might lead to a drop in performance. 

A study done by Byron, Gilroy and Hantula suggests that you should assess preference every couple of weeks or even more frequently. This is easier said than done but we believe that human resources are incredibly important, and if they aren’t valued or reinforced appropriately staff won’t perform their best work behaviour possible.  

Reinforcing

There are many variables to consider when you should reinforce behaviour: What is the target behaviour? Do they need constant reinforcement for it? Can it be spaced out?
The most crucial aspect is that the reinforcement should be delivered contingent on the target behaviour occurring. Even though there are procedures for non-contingent reinforcement, these need to be done appropriately, and most companies or employers won’t have the time and resources to do this – which can cause unwanted results.

There are many studies that show that reinforcement is the most effective when delivered immediately after the behaviour occurred, but with neurotypical adults in the work environment it’s not always possible to reinforce immediately. This is why it is important to know what you are reinforcing, what you will use as a reinforcer and then decide on a schedule (when to reinforce).


How to Assess Preferences? How to Reinforce?

Assessing reinforcers and motivation can be difficult and time consuming. Even when people are asked to complete a survey about what they prefer, they aren’t always honest. A survey can also be seen as another task to do. Even if you interview your staff on a 1:1 basis, they might not want to tell you (their employer or manager) exactly what they would like. This can be because there’s a lack of trust, they feel embarrassed, or any other reason you are not aware of. 

This being said, it’s still important to ask staff what they want, even if it’s difficult and time consuming.
You can use a mixture of interview and survey – but whether you choose one method or to combine them, try to make it as less demanding as possible.
A mixture of open questions, array of options and “would you rather” can prove to be more effective than just using open-ended questions.

Consider reinforcers that you can actually offer in a sustainable manner, there are different kinds but we will briefly discuss two different types.
Tangibles can vary from objects to activities. For example, tickets for the cinema are a tangible item to gain access to an activity. Different people like different things, some staff might like learning, so having access to workshops or training can be valuable for them.
Social reinforcement can be a manager complimenting you on your work – sometimes in private, sometimes in front of others.
Research on this topic has shown that a mix of social and tangible reinforcement seems to be the most effective. 

You can also observe staff on the kind of leisure activities they discuss, what tasks they work on first and which ones they avoid – be mindful that being observed can make people feel uncomfortable, don’t be over imposing.

Define a behaviour and test a reinforcement. Here’s an example: “Finishing a big assignment within the deadline”. This can be a bit of a vague target, you might have to define what qualifies as “big” or even define which behaviours are necessary to finish assignments on time – such as organising their time, scheduling catch up meetings, etc.
If the staff member loves going to the cinema, and you give them movie tickets for “finishing a big assignment within the deadline”, notice if their behaviour improves in future assignments. 

It’s complicated to reinforce staff for every little behaviour – it might also be complicated to find the resources to provide reinforcement. In the end, it’s all about balance: Applying a reinforcement interval that keeps staff motivated to perform certain work behaviour and using preferred items/activities that will increase or maintain behaviour.


Why Should Staff be Reinforced?

People might ask: why do I need to add more reinforcement when they already get paid a salary? That should be motivating enough for them to work. 

If a salary was enough of a reinforcement, then people would not change jobs.
Let’s look into what a salary actually reinforces. A staff member receives a salary for attending work for a certain amount of hours, they receive their wages on a weekly or monthly basis. If they are late performing tasks, they do not get the salary deducted – nor should they! Therefore, the salary is not reinforcing their productivity, it’s reinforcing them showing up for work consistently. People who work on commission, for example in sales, have to engage in certain behaviours in order to earn their commission – in this situation the commission is working as motivation for the behaviour of selling more, but it will only be a reinforcer if the behaviour is maintained or improved.

If you need staff to display more specific behaviours within the work day, then you’ll have to reinforce them for those behaviours. You can listen to more examples about this topic on our podcast episode.


End Thoughts and Resources

We’ve been on both ends, as the employee and as the manager, and we find it vital to understand reinforcement and what people are motivated by.

It can really make a difference on your staff’s productivity and the overall turnover in the workplace. 

If you’d like to learn more on this topic, there is an excellent course about OBM (Organisational Behaviour Management) run by Chief Motivating Officers –  www.chiefmotivatingofficers.com 

Here is the source for the article we referenced regarding reinforcement frequency: Byron, W., Gilroy, S. & Hantula, D. A. (2012). Temporal (in)stability of employee preferences for rewards. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 32, 58-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2012.646854


We hope you’ve enjoyed this post (and the podcast episode, if you’ve listened to it).

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Recent Posts, Season 2, Training Staff series

The Hoot Chronicles XIII – Blind Spots

March 21, 2022 //  by ABA Owls//  Leave a Comment

Hello everyone,

This episode of The Hoot Chronicles came out on March 21st and you can listen to it on our podcast Chirping with ABA Owls. This should take you to our podcast page or you can listen on iTunes, Podbean and other podcasting apps. 

Every month, we discuss a book or article(s) that we find interesting – This month we decided to go with Blind Spots: Why Students Fail… and the Science That Can Save Them.


About the author

Blind Spots was written by Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens, she is a scientist-educator, the founder of Fit Learning and has been using behavioural science in her practice since 1998, There are more than 30 centers worldwide – one is actually in London.


What is Blind Spots about?

The book focuses on the educational system, and how it is not serving students appropriately. Even though the data and information is relevant to the North American school system, there are a lot of similarities to the worldwide educational system. 


Who should read this book?

In one word? Everyone! If you’re a parent, a professional, a student or just curious, this book is for you. We’ve all been students, we’ve all felt like we were doing something wrong because we were not understanding something in school and this book addresses that. 


Inside the book

Dr. Kimberly divides her book into 8 chapters. The first 4 chapters discuss the current situation – she presents data, studies, etc. 

In the 5th chapter, she discusses the 9 myths in education – the so-called “reasons” why children (both SEN and neurotypical) are not progressing.

One of the myths is called “But they are the experts” – this myth in particular caught our attention. Many behavior analysts (including ourselves) have come across situations where our knowledge is not perceived as specialist.
If you’re a SENCO, or a teacher, or a psychologist, then you are considered a specialist. Behavior analysts seem to have a harder time being considered specialists.

For the final 3 chapters, Dr. Kimberley presents her proposed solution for what can be done in the future and the evidence supporting her strategies.


Where can you get the book?

Disclaimer: the prices might have changed since the time this post was published or the podcast episode recorded.

Physical book
Creator’s website: https://www.drkimberlyberens.com/blindspots
Ebay: £15.45
Amazon and Book Depository: £16.29
Blackwell: £11.99
AbeBooks: £11.46
Waterstones: £17.99

Online version
Apple books: £7.99

We would love to have more books in audio format – even in different languages! Any ABA authors interested, feel free to drop us a message!


Final Notes and links

The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria has an episode with Dr. Kimberly discussing her book – session 136

You can also listen to her on The Controversial Exchange podcast by Ryan O’Donnell – TCE#035

If you would like to learn more about Dr. Kimberley Berens and FitLearning, here are some links for you:
https://fitlearners.com/

https://www.drkimberlyberens.com/
https://fitlearnersldn.com/


We hope you’ve found this helpful, we will try our best to publish blog posts as the podcast episodes come out.

You can also follow us on Instagram (@ABA_owls), send us an email on aba.owls.uk@gmail.com or leave us a comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Carla and Lauren

Category: Chirping with ABA Owls, Recent Posts, The Hoot Chronicles

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