ABA and Policing

For this brew, Dan and Mike take time to incorporate some recent events with policing and the challenges faced by said institutions in providing training and support. Given current discussions and criticism of ABA methods and treatment, your hosts draw comparisons and parallels between the ideas of ABA intervention and policing as it relates to behavior management to  preserve an acceptable 'peace' in the process, but perhaps more importantly, the goal of protecting and serving. Using the model of parenting styles to create a connection between the levels of authoritarianism appropriate to either endeavor, Dan and Mike elaborate on ideas to promote a less authoritarian and more authoritative tone overall. The discussion is rich in philosophical and scientific premises all the same, resulting in a stout, frothy and very satisfying libation. Enjoy! And always analyze responsibly.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey Mike, how do you feel about today? Feeling pretty good about it?

SPEAKER_01 0:04

I think today's a great day, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

I couldn't agree more. Like you say, any day that you wake up and your name's not in the obituary, you're off to a good start. Speaking of which, today's also a great day to start your own podcast. Whether you're looking for a new marketing channel, you have a message you want to share with the world, or just think it'd be fun to have your own talk show, like we did. Podcasting is an easy, inexpensive, and fun way to expand your reach online. Maybe learn something. Now, Buzzsprout is hands down the easiest and best way to launch, promote, and track your podcast. It's what we use. Your show can be online and listed at all of the major places podcasts can be found, like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc., within minutes of you finishing your recording. You know, podcasting isn't hard when you have the right partners. And the team at Buzzsprout is passionate with helping you succeed. Join over 100,000 people just like us sharing their message, already using Buzzsprout as the conduit to get their message across the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

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SPEAKER_00 1:46

Cheers. Welcome to ABA on Tap, where our goal is to find the best recipe to brew the smoothest, coldest, and best tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lowry with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on Tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA brew, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

All right, all right. Welcome yet again to another installment of ABA on Tap. I am your co-host, Mike Rubio, along with Daniel Larry. Dan, how you doing, sir?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Doing excellent, man. Doing excellent. Yourself, great to be back in the studio.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

It is great to be back in the studio. The Reptile Studio, which is actually my teenage son's bedroom, so we have to give him a shout out for allowing us to set up the control table on his desk and whatnot. Teenage son slash sound engineer. Yes, a musician. He knows what he's doing. Thank you, son, for your help today in setting this up. If you've heard episode one, well, let's see. Not knowing how that's going to We had a little bit of a line noise on the last one, so we're back for episode two or some episode from season four, and we've got a real heady one for you guys today, literally going off the cuff, but very important themes that no doubt you will be able to discern from our discussion. I'm going to pass it over to Dan. Dan, get us started here because we've got a lot to talk about all under a certain umbrella, all related to what we do on a daily basis. basis but really reaching out to a different social impact or discussion with regard to applied behavior analysis or in general human behavior. Take it over for us here.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Yes, sir. So as we sit here, this is February 5th as we record this episode. Not sure when it's going to be published. We're about a week-ish away from the Tyree Nichols Memphis police incident that everybody's probably familiar with for the most part today. And there's been a lot of discourse about that, a lot of discussion about that, how it relates to individual police officers. how it relates to the institution of policing, how it relates to a lot of different social, cultural factors. And there's so many parallels that I think can be drawn between this policing, the incidents that are the individuals that do policing with ABA. And I wanted to talk about it. There was an individual that was the former Minneapolis police chief, I believe, during the George Floyd, Derek Chauvin situation, where he was on Belmar over the weekend. And he brought up a really interesting point, kind of defending policing in general, talking more about the individuals that were... Basically tasked with the responsibility of implementing whatever training curriculum or whatever was given to them. And reflecting on that a little bit, which made me kind of go into the mental Rolodex there and parallel that to kind of how we're feeling with ABA a little bit right now. The institution of policing is very polarized right now since the George Floyd incident. as is ABA. And I hope that we can come together, talk about some of the parallels, and hopefully bring... So a good discussion and hopefully a collaborative end to this, because even as we've seen just in our comments, people don't really want to talk about they're not here for discussion. They're not here for collaboration. They're here to make a point and run. And it seems very similar with the police situation as well. On both sides, individuals are there to make a point, defend whichever side that they're on and leave before they're willing to have any banter back and forth. So let me pass it back to you, Mike.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

So we don't. We're not seeking... We never seek an argument here as much as a possibility of a disagreement. And we're okay with that. And I openly allude to some of the people that have been trolling us on social media. And I do that because I don't have any fear that they will catch any of this attention because they're not even listening to the episodes. Nope.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

They see ABA and they post

SPEAKER_01 6:36

something and leave. Yes, yes. And that's difficult. Now, in your comparison to us... to ABA and sort of the parallels between us and policing, the idea that we're called upon to maintain a certain order. I'm going to say that very openly, and it sounds a little bit hard, but I think it's important to think about that. It's not like... especially with ABA, we're necessarily running into these situations and forcing ourselves upon them, unless, of course, we might be out in the community, think we can help, and somebody's getting aggressive. Again, we are being called upon in all of the situations to provide some sort of protection, order, restore something. And that is to say that with a very benevolent start, we still have to check ourselves as institutions, as human beings, as individuals to make sure that that very, very noble call doesn't go too far in some sort of authoritarian direction.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yes, absolutely. It comes back to that authoritarian piece that you brought about. I think most of the criticisms both for policing and for ABA is that the individuals doing it are doing so in a far too authoritarian fashion. And that's where I think a lot of the parallels come from. So yeah, let me pass it to you before I kind of get into some of my points, if there's anything that you would like to elaborate on.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

We're coming off of a few episodes last season on the topic of escalation and de-escalation. So I know that we're going to bring up those ideas today. I think they've become a very important premise in how it is we might remain authoritative in the face of crisis, for example, which for a human task is close to impossible. The idea that you're always going to be able to maintain at baseline in the face of somebody else's escalated behavior is something that I think is very relevant to both ABA and then now a greater social issue maybe with regard to authoritarianism and policing and some of the things that go tragically wrong in that vein. So I know we'll bring some of those things back up, but I think it's an important piece to highlight now because, again, it is, in my opinion, close to an impossible task that we're asking people Every human in this situation to undertake and to stay successful, especially from the professional side, right? The idea that the sound of a gunshot or sound of several gunshots, the sound of several gunshots now being aimed at you, for example, are going to allow you as a human being to stay at baseline. That's difficult. That's challenging. That's not to excuse anything that might go off protocol, that might go off kilter, because somebody is now escalated, wearing a police uniform, and supposed to maintain a certain call to order. But again, something very interesting that I know we'll discuss. Why don't you... Lead us right into your first point here, and let's start taking this apart a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yes, so I want to make sure that I get this out of the way early, just in case any of the people that want to listen and troll or have some legitimate criticisms of ABA or podcasts, whatever, can hear this. Is the police institution overly authoritarian? Probably, almost certainly. Is ABA overly authoritarian at times? probably, almost certainly. So there are certain similarities there. And when some of these institutions become unchecked, then individuals can become a little bit too authoritarian as opposed to authoritative when they're implementing said procedure. And I do want to define these things moving forward so that we're all on the same wavelength here, because I think you and I might understand authoritative versus authoritarian, but that might The semantic difference might be lost on some other individuals. So authoritarian and... is is more the do it right now how i said quickly and get it done so the you need to you need to do this now and it needs to get done needs a very common thing in authoritative i'm not listening about and there's no back and forth it's do it how i said now go i

SPEAKER_01 11:04

think you meant authoritarian there just to make sure we keep them clear right

SPEAKER_00 11:06

yes okay i thought i said authoritarian that's all right just making sure because it does get tricky i agree yes so that's the authoritarian the think the the military parent like the military is very authoritative authoritarian go here and now, don't question it. Authoritative is more, we're going to collaborate and work on what's best for us. So permissive being, hey, is it okay? Do you mind if you do this? That's okay if you don't want to do it. That's very permissive. Where authoritative is giving an instruction that is going to be in the best interest of both individuals. And within understanding how it's going to benefit both individuals. So instead of you need to do your homework now, which would be authoritarian, authoritative would be, hey, this homework should get done in order for you to obtain whatever grade. How are we going to go about getting this homework done despite the fact that you don't want to do it? It would benefit you to get it done, so how can we work together to get it done? Versus permissive would be, do you want to do the homework or is it okay if you would do the homework? Those are kind of the three levels.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Just for a quick frame of reference, we are... purposefully and directly using Diana Bomrand traditional parenting styles definitions. I think that they stay about the same, whether you're speaking politically, geopolitically, but just to be clear, that's obviously where we're coming from in terms of making this relatable to parents, professionals, for example, in the ABE field, but drawing these comparisons now to professionals in law enforcement who clearly are going to find themselves in much riskier situations than we might day to day. But just to give a point of reference, I think we're We're using Diana Bomren's model here. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yes, yes. Thank you for that. So I think the question when we're talking about these modalities, which at times can become authoritarian, are is the institution itself inherently authoritarian? Or is the institution okay? And is it the individuals that are representing the institution that, like you said, sometimes can get put off of baseline or in fight or flight mode that may become authoritarian? So... Do we need more individual training or do we need to completely rewrite the institution? And I think right now, as society becomes very polarized, people just want to jump to whatever it is we need to rewrite the institution, right? With policing. We need to disband the police. That's the only solution we need to disband the police. And we can see how that worked out in some of the precincts that did that. That wasn't very effective. So Policing, some level of policing or something of similar nature is probably beneficial for society as a whole. Same thing with ABA. So these individuals that now have had ABA and coming out and explaining about their experiences are saying, hey, these individuals were too authoritarian. They made me do things I didn't want to do. And looking back on it, I wish I wouldn't have done that or wish I wouldn't have gone through that. The question is, is ABA... the culprit there? Or could the individual who worked with that person potentially with autism, as we're most commonly partnered with now, implemented this ABA methodologies in a more authoritative style rather than being authoritarian? I think we spend a lot of time working on that in our company, trying to be more authoritative, much less authoritarian, and much more culturally aware of the people that we serve. So I don't think the institution of ABA needs to necessarily just be completely disbanded because there's always in any institution, in church, most people look at church as being kind of an altruistic facility and structure. There's individuals who don't implement church strategies effectively and there's bad apples in anything. So for us to say, yes, there's individuals who had undesirable experiences in any field that you go in, There are going to be these individuals. I think what we're saying is let's come to the table. Let's talk about it. Let's figure out how we can improve ourselves because right now we're the best answer. If there's a better answer, if there becomes a better answer, then maybe we're having a different discussion. If there's a better answer for a societal, you know, preventing somebody from murdering somebody or stealing something from you than policing, then by all means, let's have that discussion. But until we can find something that's sustainably better than that, Same with ABA, and still there's a new gold standard of autism treatment. Let's work within those confines and figure out how we can maximize and humanely implement the treatments that are being implemented on both regards.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

There's an evolution institutionally as well, right? Whether we're talking about treatment perspectives or law, things that change in order to... Modulate, moderate, conform, modify, enhance, improve treatment of certain individuals, whether society as a whole or if we're looking at different cultures, different races. Dare I even go there or say that word because it gets so complicated. Sure. And I think that's something that that. I encourage everybody to be a little bit more mindful of. You allude to the bad apples. There's always going to be bad apples. The bigger question that you're also alluding to is, is this a bad barrel? Yes. And is it the entire barrel? Is it because there are so many bad apples within this barrel? Is it a few staves that need to be changed? But the idea that we're not going to have a barrel is the problem. The idea that we're just going to get rid of the barrel and let these apples sit on the ground. Yeah. No, they're going to rot that way too. Right. So again, some level of conformity, some level of order that is appropriate, that is necessary here without going too far. And that is the dance. There's this back and forth. You know, I encroached a little too much. I have to back up. But now if I'm the figure of authority, that gets difficult. Right. So the idea that I'm the teacher and I ask you to do something and and you don't do it immediately, runs the risk of somehow, at least in most of our minds, disempowering me such that now every other student is also going to Yes. never a need for authoritarianism we're saying it might have gone too far and the techniques might not have evolved fast enough given our access to the marketplace in terms of treatment for autism and the insurance mandates such that we have to check ourselves yes and this is what something that we love to do here on aba on tap is check ourselves um Yeah, I think these are all very, very important questions because while we want to maintain our authoritative stance most of the time, there is a time for authoritarianism. Yep. There's even a time for permissiveness. Absolutely. Probably never a time for being neglectful. Correct. Hopefully not. Yep. But... even the margin of error as human beings, is going to allow us to be neglectful sometimes. And we're trying to limit those. That's where the training comes in. That's where experience comes in. That's where ongoing professional development comes in, something that I know we take very seriously in our day-to-day work. If you're a large ABA company, you're a large police department, you're a large school district, maybe some of that stuff falls by the wayside. Maybe even... Discussion in new themes in looking at things like developmental disability. We've come a long way in understanding something like autism, to be specific to that, right? Yet a lot of times some of the procedures and techniques still harken back to very antiquated views or very singular views of autism. I'll mention this, we don't have to get into it, but the idea of visual structure. Sure. Right? Something that could be much more universally used, but we still seem to exclusively seem to think that the autistic population benefits based on some larger categorization of poor auditory skills. Well, again, that's where we start stereotyping, if you will, and then we might miss the greater point. So understanding diversity better in the populations we treat, understanding our own propensities to run into authoritarian challenges as human beings who are trying to take control or control Yes. And I think

SPEAKER_00 20:10

you bring up a good point when you talk about the diagnosis, the autistic population. And I think that's where there's some similarities in how individuals can become too authoritarian, even compared to policing, is that when one individual sees themselves different than another individual, that's when these sort of, you know, the interaction can kind of dissolve and it can become So oftentimes police officers look at the people that they're interacting with as criminals, right? That person was breaking the law. Therefore, that person is a criminal and therefore different than me. Individuals in ABA oftentimes are working with people with a diagnosis. The people doing the therapy don't have a diagnosis. Therefore, this person is different than me. Sometimes when misattributed, that difference can... You can look at somebody as... When you look at somebody as different, hesitate to say lesser than because I hope most of our... practitioners don't look at individuals on the spectrum is lesser than. We do a lot of cultural competency training in our company and discussions about making sure that we don't ever look at individuals like that. I can't speak for other people in the field or police officers and their interactions with criminals, but once you look at somebody as different than yourself, then you can have a lot of other justifications on why they're doing something and therefore how you can respond to that situation.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

And therein creeps in the idea of conformity. Because you're different than me, because in this circumstance, I may have a quote-unquote authority over you. You have to do exactly like me or you're incorrect. But what you're talking about, what I'm talking about, what we're promoting here is... I'm trying to think of a good example here. So these are developmental milestones in various domains. It looks like you are four years old and you're performing at a two-and-a-half-year-old developmental level. So we're going to look at these... evaluation items and say well you're not doing color shapes or numbers so the only way to bring you up to speed is to flood you with color shapes and numbers now that is not illogical but that could be overly authoritarian knowing that it might not just be those symbols but a bunch of other developmentally appropriate things that might get you into the realm of acceptable behavior acceptable, whatever that means, gets you within range, gets you talking about animals because you've been showing a bunch of different stimuli, a subset of that category that I didn't mention there. But the idea that there's a more open-ended solution, at least for us as ABA practitioners, from a developmental perspective, maybe not so much for law enforcement in these situations. The idea that I need you to put your hands behind your back so I can cuff you, how many different ways can you do that without than posing a threat, right? But again, I think you highlight a very important point in terms of a direct linear conformity in your behavior versus a bigger luxury in what we do every day in a much more open-ended circuitous route and saying, I really, it'd be great if you learned your letters and I'm going to present you those stimuli But it doesn't necessarily mean that I can only present those stimuli and those stimuli only on our route to you understanding other symbols, which will then have a crossover collateral effect to you understanding symbols in general. And then we can relate how letters and shapes have similar forms and how those translate into a whole bunch of different things. So I threw a lot out there. I'll pass it back over to you and see if you can help us dissect that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Yes. Use the term acceptable behavior. And I saw that you kind of cringe when you use that because that's a tricky one. What does that mean? Acceptable to who? Sometimes that's the basis of where we start to falter or fall apart. I think with our field, acceptable behavior is... things that the parent is concerned about, things that are going to be socially significant, as we call it, and that would be meaningful for that individual in home, community, and school environments. So behaviors that are going to be pro-social at home and school and things like that. And those behaviors should be articulated by the parent or, even more importantly, by the client. I know we've had discussions recently. We run social groups and we even have adult groups. And the idea of creating goals for adults... Seems weird. They should be creating their own goals. So again, that's one of the kind of even historical authoritarian aspects that as we start to acknowledge and take a look holistically at our field, it's like, oh, maybe we were even inadvertently being a little authoritarian with this. With policing, acceptable behavior is obviously things that are determined by the law, which is determined by the people. So again, acceptable behavior, there is some level of acceptable behavior. I think we can use that term. We don't necessarily have to cringe as long as we make sure that we are not the ones determining acceptable behavior. So as the ABA practitioner, I'm not the one that says this kid can't stim or this kid needs to use their words, or this kid needs to do anything, it's the parent or the child or that kid's immediate environment that determine that, and I'm just there to help that. Just as the police officer is not there to say this person can or can't do anything, it's the institution above him or the people that have made the laws and that individual is just enforcing them. So I think that acceptable behavior, I really like that you actually used that term because that's, I think, where we get some detractors to start. I have another point, but before I get to that point, anything you wanted to add to that?

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Oh, man, there's so much to unpack here. I'll present this, and then maybe we'll circle back to it. There is a line. No matter what, there's a line, right? So we can talk about it in terms of the word assaultive. If you're talking about our work or policing, there's a line that gets drawn there. And it's not... a clear line. It's not a visible line by everybody. There's still a haziness in that line based on our own predetermined level of escalation or preconceived notions in any given circumstance. If I'm with a client with a bit of an aggressive propensity and they happen to be bigger than me and they happen to be very animated in their hand movements as they don't mind their personal space, any of those situations with any given tension could help me misinterpret something as assaultive. Now imagine being in a policing uniform. I imagine it's that much more of a challenge. So it is, again, I'm drawing that line not because I want to say, yeah, that's misbehavior and we have a right to correct it, which is going to be a very applicable phrasing here. It sounds a little bit antiquated, probably misses a lot of variables if we apply it directly, but there is a line even with milestones. The idea that... It's not our job as ABA professionals to teach somebody to read, but it could be part of our job to highlight enough behaviors toward pre-literacy that we give the individual an opportunity toward that skill, which is socially significant. I think some aspects of neurodivergence have gone so far in one direction that they would say no. you are being too authoritarian by expecting that somebody's going to read.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Yeah, for the reading example, correct, it might not be our job to determine, to teach somebody how to read. It's our job to, if the parent, or if the child, the parent, the teacher, whoever we're collaborating with, determines that's the appropriate skill for us to find things in the environment that are going to increase the reading behavior and decrease the behaviors they're doing instead of reading.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

And that's the exact point there, is that a lot of these things are predetermined, right? So So to use the literacy example, reading example very poignantly, any developmental framework is going to encourage that. Any school set of standards is going to encourage that. socially and significantly, there is a lot of access that can be gained. So that's not to say that that gives us now a right to be authoritarian about reading, but it does contribute to the haziness of those lines or those tenets that we might feel very good about, but if we're not reading, if we're not taking in the room, we're not reading the room, who it is we're applying these literacy skills to, and they're showing a lot of withdrawal, but we know that it's good for them because they need to learn to read because that's beneficial, I think that's the gray area that we're sort of considering here. That's where it gets very difficult. Somebody can be very well-intended, right? but come in and completely derail a situation if you're not checking yourself.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Absolutely. And that's the question of whether it's the institution that basically makes it so that you don't check yourself or the individual within the institution. You mentioned earlier, you were talking about a teacher. And I've been in a lot of IEPs. I was in one last week, actually. And it was very interesting when we talk about authoritarian. This IEP that I was in last week, they actually asked me to come there for behavioral strategies. And this teaching group, there was a couple of teachers in the IEP, and I don't know what other people were there, I don't remember, would basically take no other suggestion about how to alter their classroom environment or their responses other than get this kid to listen to me and fall in line. Anything other than that, if I was like, hey, can you try this? Can you try that? That wasn't what they were here to hear. They were here to hear how I could basically go back to this child and say, you need to fall in line and listen to your teachers. Authoritarianism pervades a lot of other fields. I don't hear people calling for, you know, there's a lot of education reform. I totally get it. But people saying we just need to not do schools anymore. There's plenty of authoritarian teachers. There's plenty of great teachers. Is the... Concept of education, inherently authoritarian. Probably not, but there's some apples with that. Back to your barrel and apples analogy earlier that I really liked. Yeah, we're probably not going to throw the barrel away because we just end up with some apples strewn across the floor. But a couple of bad apples. can ruin a barrel. So we're kind of at this conundrum. The easiest solution would be to, okay, we're just going to dump all the wine out and all the apples out and we're going to start fresh. But unfortunately with policing, we can't do that. We can't just go to society and say, hey, for the next eight months, we're just going to do police training nonstop. And everybody that's going to commit a crime, just hang on for eight months while we do that. We can't dump it all out and start over. Same thing with ABA.

UNKNOWN 31:09

We're

SPEAKER_00 31:10

I guess we could, but it would not be beneficial to the individuals on the spectrum to not have some sort of therapy for eight months. So we've kind of got to try to go into the barrel and pull out as many bad apples as we can and minimize any, you know, the apples making the barrel overall go bad.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

And this is where, again, I have to really encourage our listeners, anybody out there that I speak to, to think of the... historical progression of both the apples and the barrel. And again, speaking to ourselves professionally as ABA professionals, I have to say this, and I've said it before. If you find yourself exclusively running trial types, you might be holding on to a bad barrel. And because of that, you're the apple within... you're a bad apple. Is that to say that trial types are inherently bad? No. It's to say that they were able to highlight a certain value in a statistical model, a presentation model, that seemed to be effective at fostering learning for a population of individuals that were otherwise not learning given the barrel at that time. Yep. So that's a really... challenging premise, I think, for everybody. I don't even know if I made any sense there. But I think that that's a problem that we're having with ABA and current criticism. And that's a problem that we have with almost anything we deal with these days. I'll say it, whether it's gender or race or ethnicity, the idea that there's a lot of new language based on concern and criticism. And if you don't immediately adapt to that, you're a bad apple with a rotten barrel. Absolutely. And there's no other discussion for that. And again, I would caution everybody. I don't say that to pardon us as ABA professionals, given the current criticism. In fact, you and I, I think, are at the forefront of saying, hey, you know what? That's pretty true. We should change that. But I need to caution everybody that's listening here, anybody that I speak to, to be historically contextual, to understand the progression of both the apple and the barrel, the changes that have been made, the reason why those apples and barrels existed anyway in 1971, what was happening at UCLA, what was happening to the population of individuals deemed as childhood schizophrenics. At that They

SPEAKER_00 33:52

were just thrown in

SPEAKER_01 33:53

the institution. Providing, certainly, certainly substantiating and giving much more access from a human and social perspective. And then now to the professional side, if you're still practicing like the practice looked in 1971, yeah, there's a problem. Come up to date, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah? Yeah. 100%. You mentioned earlier that there's a time for all three of the responses, whether it's authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and then the fourth one, neglectful, probably not a time for that. Yes. Something that will happen. That would lead to a CPS or CWS report if done consistently. And I think that's important when we talk about... You mentioned assaulting behavior and stuff like that. So if... That can be where the black and white can be very difficult for, say, a police officer, right? If a police officer is enforcing the law, there's no real judgment with that, right? So you're on a desolate road and you're speeding. Police officer pulls you over and says, you're speeding. You need to stop speeding. That's not authoritative. That's authoritarian. There's no question about why you're speeding. There's no interaction there. In that situation, maybe authoritative response, you know, why were you speeding? And I'm sure some of them ask that. Don't know if that's just to further a legal case, but maybe you're trying to get somewhere and you're in a hurry, and maybe the police officer could actually help you in that situation. But from being that black and white, an authoritative response might be better. That being stated, if I'm a police officer and I go to a call and men and women are fighting... It's probably not a time for me to be authoritative and say, well, let me figure out what would be best for you and why are you fighting and things. I need to stop the fight. If the house is on fire, right, I need to put the house out and then I'll figure out how to install a sprinkler system and what we can do in the future. So I can see, you know, there's times even in ABA, if we're working with a child and they're about to jump out the window, yeah, it's probably time to be authoritative and grab that child and And put them in a safe place where they're not going to injure themselves. Where they're banging themselves in the head. Which some of our clients do. Probably time to be authoritative and put our hand in between their hand and their head. A pillow. Something to prevent them from injuring themselves. They're about to run into the street. Time to be authoritative. The problem is, if that's done consistently... authoritarian, excuse me. If that's done consistently, then it's difficult to be authoritative because when you're authoritarian, things get done quickly and you can move on. If you're a police officer, you've got to enforce the law for everybody. If I spend 25 minutes talking to you about why you're speeding, what about all the other people I could have gotten in that time? Same thing, you know, with ABA, if I'm spending five, 10 minutes figuring out why you don't want to do homework and going back and forth, we could have gone through 15 programs in that time. Now for me and our company, we don't really care about going through 15 programs. We'd want to hit that homework one with a level of independence and autonomy that the other 14 programs can wait if we can get whichever one we're working on done correctly. So we prioritize that. But also, I can see that historically, getting through a huge data sheet and getting through a lot of things quickly, the authoritarian perspective is beneficial, leads to a little bit more authoritarian implementers, which then makes the institution itself seem a little bit more

SPEAKER_01 37:30

authoritarian. You used a couple of examples there that I think I might be able to expand on a little bit, and hopefully they make sense. But the idea of... I like to talk about the... If you're able to say yes... say yes and when, if it's not in the immediate moment. Instead of saying no? Instead of saying no. And then there are some hard no's that nobody is going to be able to just allow, like a child running into the street. So you have every right to be authoritarian in that moment and make sure that you use everything, even physical force, to use that loosely to grab your child and make sure that they're not running out in the middle of the street, especially if there's traffic. And then there's the idea that now we're not even going to go to the front door or look out the window at the street because you might get the idea of running into the street, and then now that level of authoritarianism is going to be impactful in a negative way.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

And we're not going to teach you proactively about the dangers of the street. So when you

SPEAKER_01 38:36

talk about speed limits, maybe this relates in some way, shape, or form to the idea of... developmental delays or milestones, if you will. The idea that somebody is already at a different limit. Yep. Right? So something's already been... Some premise has already been violated, if you will. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

And... Someone's not behaving in the way that is expected.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Or the way that their potential might allow or a way that might seem safe or productive for their future or however we want to picture it. And society as a whole. There is a limit. I like the idea of a speed limit here. Now... The difference, and you explained this very nicely, the difference between... a police officer that just enforces that limit blindly versus the one that says, that takes a look at the circumstances, says, wow, you look a little frazzled. Is everything okay, ma'am? Is that a child in the back seat? Are they choking? What's happening that made you violate this limit? And I think there's a really important lesson to be drawn from that, the circumstances, how we understand the circumstances of the individuals we're providing treatment to, knowing that certain limits are I'm having a hard time finding the verb here. I don't want to say violated or disregarded. Certain limits aren't being met or adhered to, whatever that is. And yes, even in the benevolence of saying, I want to help this child come up to speed on these developmental levels, even that can get you into some authoritarian trouble based on your routes. Are you going to be so linear that you're not going to take into account just the active interest of the child in what they're doing, knowing that you have these milestones to hit. Back to your example with a laundry list of goals that usually look much more like rules that you want the child to adhere to and not necessarily cognitive behavioral matters that are going to allow any individual to understand that particular limit and then have a real say or choice to understand the benefit or the reinforcement available to being able to, as a result of admitting that behavior, and then choose to use it or not, to speak or not, to read or not. It's an active choice that, again, it's our benevolence, it's our better humanity that a lot of times gets us into trouble with authoritarianism.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Yes, I really like that you kept coming back to the word circumstances. And I'm almost thinking kind of along the lines of, Differences, almost cloud circumstances in this point, because when people are different, we no longer look at the circumstances. We focus on the differences. It's that fundamental attribution error.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

And then bring them back to exactly what we think is the norm. Exactly. That

SPEAKER_00 41:25

fundamental attribution error, right? If I do something, I'm justified and there's a reason for it. If you do something, you're doing it despite me. And I think that's, you know, those differences, cloud circumstances, right? So if I can say somebody is a criminal and I'm a police officer, I don't care about the circumstance. anymore they're different than me and that's why they're doing it if I say somebody has autism I don't necessarily care why they're doing what they're doing they have autism and they need to be fixed and I think that's what we're trying to get away from let me make sure that nobody takes that sound bite what I'm trying to say is that is an idea that's been had in the past and that's something that we're actively actively trying to overcome just because someone's different doesn't mean we need to trivialize any of the circumstances that they're going through And look at it as a result of the differences and say, oh, well, because they're different, they need to do X, Y, and Z. No, they're no different than us. They're humans. They're individuals. Why are they doing what they're doing? Let me look at it in a compassionate fashion and help them. And I think that's where... The police officers, ABA professionals, all of these people came about initially to help. ABA didn't force themselves on anybody. If there wasn't evidence to support that, insurances wouldn't fund us. Same with police. There was communities saying, oh, there's these things that are happening that are to the detriment of our community. Let's band together and figure out some people that can hopefully stop this from happening and help us out. That being stated, me even being probably the least affected, um, individual in this situation being a white male, even myself, if a police officer pulls up behind me, I'm still nervous. I rarely think that individual is going to help me. I think that there's an authoritarianism there, and that individual is more likely to overpower or impact my day negatively than impact my day positively.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

You just made me think of something, and I don't know if we'll be able to do this effectively, but... You know, we get into matters of as a white male, maybe given recent events, people would say that you have less reason to be fearful. Sure. But you're no less going to be annoyed at the prospect of a speeding ticket. Sure. That's still an undesired consequence. And I wonder if we can take that idea, the idea of how any of us feel. Especially if we think we weren't speeding, if we think we didn't do a rolling stop and we know that we're facing the consequence of an undesired consequence, a ticket, a fine of some sorts. If we're able to understand that feeling as human beings and realize that it is. we run the risk of making our clients feel that exact same way. Yes. With everything we do in the treatment we provide, if we're not actively listening and looking at the circumstances that everybody's in, we run that risk. And whether, yes, whether Johnny would benefit from sitting, just make him sit, we need to be able to guide Johnny through all the other possibilities too of not sitting so that he can contrast that to now sitting at some point assuming that that teacher and I'm alluding to that IEP you were at that that teacher was ready to reinforce Johnny and provide some level of praise whatever it is it's going to make Johnny want to sit more in the future knowing that he knows all about not sitting and running amok in the classroom but again it's so difficult for us not to draw that direct line and And then Johnny feels like he's getting a speeding ticket, which we can all, whether you were speeding or not, you're not going to admit to it. How many of us have been pulled over and been like, officer, you got me. I was speeding. Give me that ticket, please. Please give me that ticket. No, nobody, right? Nobody likes to be corrected. Yep. And especially not in an authoritarian fashion or punitively. So I think, and again, it's not that we do that actively. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody can relate to the notion of being corrected. Even if we know we're wrong, we don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

Yep, I'm sure that's how a lot of the individuals with autism or the autistic individuals feel when they're stimming and corrected or something like that. They feel like they were speeding and they weren't hurting anybody, and all of a sudden they're constantly corrected. And that's what, you know, going to that helping versus overpowering. So all of these institutions were initially... created to help the community at large. But as we've learned from the Stanford prison experiment that unchecked authoritarianism can lead to undesired results or unchecked power can lead to authoritarianism. And police officers, who checks the police? Not too many people. There's not a lot of police pulling over police saying, was this person actually speeding, et cetera. Same thing with ABA. There's not a lot of People checking ABA, ABA is a little bit of a unique field. So we don't even really fall under the guise of psychology or psychiatry. Not a lot of people outside of ABA know exactly what we do. So no one can really check us. And that's honestly what we're trying to do in this podcast. And that's why when people try to troll us, if they actually listened... they would probably be like, Oh wow, these people are actually trying to make a difference because coming to the table is step one. And if we're not, you know, we don't want to be the Stanford prison experiment people and say like, Oh, you have the power to get this kid to do whatever you want. So therefore you have the power to get this kid to do whatever you want. It's yes. You probably, the parents would support you in your follow through of these kids behavior. That being stated, um, Should you have this environmental contingency in place? Should we be working on this behavior? Do you know why you're doing what you're doing? Doing everything with a purpose, not just, I have the power to come and make these people do what I want them to do, so I'm going to do it. But doing it with a purpose and an understanding and a level of compassion that, again, not looking at these individuals differently. I know you mentioned that earlier, and I want to highlight that word again, compassion. The circumstance and that difference piece. Looking at each other similarly and with that same level of understanding and compassion.

SPEAKER_01 47:59

A certain level of divergence and diversity in our behavior and what is now deemed acceptable as a range of behavior, knowing that if we're looking at any sort of standard distribution, that's all the idea of normalcy is. It's something that seems to happen more commonly and then... two other tails under that curve that don't happen as commonly. You brought up a couple of really important points that I want to highlight. Number one being the Stanford Prison Experiment. a big fan with good reasons of that whole era of psychology, as well as the Stanford Prison Experiment and Philip Zimbardo. Some of the criticisms that get highlighted from that experiment are very valid with regard to its experimental design. And then at the same time, you have to look at things like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and all those natural replications of the Stanford Prison Experiment that occurred, which really begs to let us all know that given any sort of unsupervised situation where we are placed in a role of authority... All of us run the risk of subjugating others in that way. All of us. All of us. Yes. And that's, I think, a point that you're making with this that's very, very, very, very important to highlight. And I had another point, and it's fleeting me at the moment, but you're going to take it. You got something to say, so maybe it'll come back

SPEAKER_00 49:23

after you do. I do. I do. I kind of wanted to wrap up the... We've been talking a lot and wrap up kind of some solutions, some thoughts, some parallels between the two things. Let's do that. But before I get to the wrap-up, did you get your thought back? No. No, let's

SPEAKER_01 49:35

do that. I might... It might come back. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

So the, the first thing, um, kind of in my, in my steps of improving this situation, cause sure we can, we can kind of rant and rave all day about, about these things, but how are we going to improve them? What are we going to do to make them differently or make them, uh, different? Number one is acknowledgement and accountability. And I feel like ABA as a whole policing as a whole probably doesn't have as much of that as they should. Um, people again get polarized and they go to their corners. And if there's any criticism, and then again, this is what I see on media and things like that. So that may or may not be an accurate representation of policing, but it seems like the discussions that I hear about policing, the pro-police side is very much kind of in their corner. And it's like all or nothing. It's like, well, just because we have, just because, you know, this, You know, these people did this to Tyree Nichols or George Floyd. That doesn't mean policing is bad. Okay, but we also have to acknowledge that there could be bad, bad individuals. And what are we going to do about that?

SPEAKER_01 50:44

It goes a little further. You even get justifications for that very behavior that we see as... tragic and awful when you're sitting there watching eight minutes of somebody's knee on somebody else's neck. And you're right. One side is still going to find a way to defend that. And it could be out of context. I don't know. Not to try to say that we can solve that particular circumstance very, very historically, politically charged. I don't know. But I like your point, what you're saying here, in the sense that there has to be a dialogue. The idea that, no, you saw that video on TV, we were doing this, and that was fully justified for these reasons, versus ooh, we see the video too, and you know what, you're right, this could have gone differently in these ways.

SPEAKER_00 51:35

Or even if they don't say it was fully justified, they say, well, that was only just one person doing it, we have no responsibility for that. Well, you do when they work under your umbrella, so that's another perspective I will say, my personal opinion, are policing or ABA perfect? Neither one of them are perfect. In 100 years, we may have better institutions to help individuals maintain the law and to help individuals with autism. Neither one of them are perfect. Would we be better off without the police or ABA? I also don't think that's the case. So with that understanding, let's figure out how we can go and improve it. And number one, again, that acknowledgement or accountability. Same thing with ABA. These individuals who are speaking out against ABA, and we've done many episodes on that, it's really easy... from an ABA perspective to dissect it and be like, nope, they're wrong. They wouldn't do this and they wouldn't have this skill and they're wrong. This was just either, they're either wrong or the person who did the ABA was wrong. And that's not, that's again getting defensive. That's not bringing an open mind to the table. No, there are a lot of bad practitioners and there's certain things in the field of ABA that are leading to this authoritarianism. We mentioned earlier professional development and training. That's one of the things that Very unique in our company specifically. One of the things on a larger level that insurance companies and the reimbursement rates for ABA don't really allow for a lot of professional development and training. So these individuals aren't really being trained that thoroughly on the job. That's one of the issues with policing, right? With the whole defund the police. Are these individuals being trained? Well, they need more training, but we need to defund them. Well, how do we... How do we give them less funding and more training? That doesn't seem to jive really well. And with policing, again, some of the more nuanced arguments are, well, let's take away some of the gear and some of that kind of stuff and devote it to training. With ABA, we don't get a lot of gear funding and stuff like that. So fortunately, we have a unique model at our company. But I think larger, there definitely needs to be a discussion about reimbursement rates and how the structure of ABA is implemented. because there are structural aspects of ABA that are leading to overly authoritarian applications of that ABA. That's the first thing I wanted to mention. Let me pass it to you. So

SPEAKER_01 54:04

in order to, as a provider, in order to stay competitive, stay solvent, given current reimbursement rates, you might be motivated to then assign a certain level of service that is also justified by prior research, but if implemented in a certain way or not taking into account family's schedule, routine, just their availability in general, then we fall into that authoritarian rank because now we're doing things without considering the benefit as much as just the dictates, the laws, the policies, the regulations. And I like this. Something that we need to get to here on ABA on tap is discussion of reimbursement rates and how they affect our recommendations for treatment given that we have to survive in a capitalist model. So that's something that we will come back to for sure. But I think a very, very solid point. And then one more thing that I'll say is we're trained as ABA professionals policemen are highly trained at the police academy and what we're talking about more specifically likely is the ongoing professional development the time to sit hopefully be funded paid for uh to be able to sit like a lot of the employees that you know that that we collaborate with a lot of the technicians that we get to collaborate with to be able to sit Once a week, at least once a month, and have open clinical discussion, not just talk about your hours and what you delivered, that's very refreshing. It's akin to something that I've talked to many police officers about that I know personally, the idea, well, how much time do you get to go to the range and practice shooting? We don't.

SPEAKER_00 55:59

Or even talk to your superiors about what's working and what's not working.

SPEAKER_01 56:02

Or not get pulled into a session with somebody, a behavior analyst or somebody, to talk you down, to help you feel a little bit more calm, to get pulled into that on a regular basis, not just when you fired your weapon and are now being investigated. And again, I don't know if that's how these things play out. Now I'm using a very popular media notion of how those things might play out. But in having talked to a lot of people, personal friends that are in law enforcement, it doesn't sound like these active professional development efforts are made there. And again, very fortunate to work where we're able to work. I think that we are afforded that constant effort toward improving and bringing ourselves up to speed through professional development. I know that, unfortunately, there are other agencies that don't necessarily afford that. So you've got these weekly supervisors meetings and there's zero clinical discussion. It's all about fiscal matters.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

Absolutely. Yeah. Like you mentioned, I'll just start a random number. We can say there's 20% margin on the hour that a therapist bills. The only way that you're going to get enough hours to be able to supplement non-billable time with training is if you scale that significantly. And that's what the model that a lot of providers have is let's just scale it. Let's just take that margin that they have and individual with 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 hours a week of ABA so that maybe on the back end we'll have a little bit of unbillable time left that we can train this individual. Altruistically, that's what I hope they do. Who knows where that scaled monetization goes. But yeah, that's what you're mentioning. And same thing even with Teaching the teaching profession. My girlfriend's doing her doctorate thesis, doctoral thesis on the training of paraprofessionals and school staff. She's a principal. They don't really get much time to between the unions and hours and things like that to train staff. They're just pretty much thrown in and they get an hour here or there. But to talk about adequately training people. Teachers don't get that much and paraprofessionals like the aides and the special ed schools don't get that much. And I would say overall in the ABA profession, very few ABA practitioners get that. So that's certainly a systematic thing that, again, we need to all come to the table and not just be defensive and say ABA is perfect. These people just need to fall in line. No, there's some systematic issues starting from the top in that monetization rate. I hate to bring it back to money, but in order for a company to be solvent, they have to be profitable. Fortunately, we've been able to find some ways around that. But the increased staff training is a systematic problem, which then manifests on the individual level. So that's the first thing I noted, that bringing it all together. The first thing that we all have to do is, or that would behoove us all to do on the police side, the ABA side, whatever, is is acknowledge our inadequacies and not be defensive about the things that people are accusing us of. But first, look at the truth behind those accusations and say, yeah, these things are true. The next thing is looking at whether it's an issue of the institution or an issue of the practitioner. And we've talked a little bit about both today, but that all comes down to training and how many resources people want to allocate to training Because obviously we live in a capitalistic society. And typically in any field that you're doing, training is going to be counterproductive to production. You're not going to be making money for whatever that entity is or doing your job while you're training.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

And that's the biggest problem right there, I think, that just continues to perpetuate itself. And I think that's where I would... Living where we live and the cost of living here and the cost of gas, knowing that our technicians drive to provide in-home services, I don't really see any other way than it has to come from the top. Those rates have to change, because otherwise, how do you survive? To be able to pay your staff, somebody somewhere is going to suffer fiscally. And we know that somewhere in that chain, right at the top of those reimbursement rates, are people that are not suffering fiscally. They are definitely benefiting from the capitalist view, and good for them. But again, it is a restriction that is likely fostering some level of unfettered authoritarianism, whether we like it or not. Another reason we have to check ourselves. We have to understand these premises from a training perspective perspective. on all fronts, fiscally and otherwise. That means that a good RBT might have to understand all this information very well as they continue to learn more about human development, as they continue to develop in techniques and procedures in ABA, which are all separate pieces. So it is a tall order for individuals who are working very hard at times and also not necessarily at a comfortable level in the socioeconomic strata because of reimbursement rates, for example. So that's a tough line to cut through right there.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

So acknowledgement, training, listening to the demographic that you serve. So I know with policing, they talk a lot of times about going into underserved communities or communities where these police interact a lot, listening to that community. For Us, it's listening to individuals on the spectrum. I think we do a lot of that. And also listening to parents. I do a lot of parent groups. We either have or will publish an episode on parent involvement and parent training and really listening to what they have to say from the outside perspective. And then lastly, collaboration with all of those individuals. And what I mean by that is not... coming in and just doing a drive-by post, which is just going to lead... That's actually counterproductive to what you're trying to do, because all that's going to do is cause the other side to dig in farther. So whenever we get a post like that and somebody who doesn't want to discuss it, we're either going to disregard it or dig in harder. But if somebody has a legitimate accusation or gripe to have with ABA, policing, whatever... Having a forum to talk about that, I think, is going to be hugely beneficial to that institution. And we're talking about ABA specifically. Having these discussions will help the people that we serve and help our practitioners become less authoritarian because they will be made more aware of it. So those individuals who are expressing dissatisfaction with whatever it is, I really, really encourage you to have discussions with that are open-minded and productive because that will, at the end of the day, really help the individuals or the institutions that you're dissatisfied with kind of get into the 22nd century and become better institutions.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:01

So stay dynamic, not static. Even rules need to be dynamic. Even speed limits, as we discussed, can be more of a dynamic than a fixed premise if we are authoritative institutions within our enforcement, and that's an interesting way to put it because enforcement is such an authoritarian word. Exactly. But there are certain limits that we want to adhere to, certain limits that we want to strive to achieve, and that's all we're here for, right? So just to, again, knowing that they're probably not listening, but no, we're not the ABA industrial complex. But we do believe that we've got a very powerful philosophy of science in our grasp that we could implement toward the improvement of many facets of society. And we've only thus far been utilized for ABA treatment, hence our off-the-cuff discussion today about how this applies to policing. We've talked now about behavioral pediatrics and ABA in primary care. At the end of the day, we're talking about human behavior here that, yes, has also been developed or developed You know, researched under the guise of other animal behavior. But the tenets apply. We know that. We know that. And we know that the more humanity we're able to instill, the more of a dynamism that we're able to instill in our implementation of these procedures. the more socially significant it should become. So, Mr. Lowry, we've covered a lot here today, sir. Thank you for the impromptu, very, very heady discussion. Any other closing points before we wrap up

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

here? Yeah, just full circle. Is policing authoritarian? Sometimes is ABA authoritarian sometimes. And I hope with these discussions, with us bringing this up, with us training our staff and hopefully bringing it to a wider audience, we'll be less authoritarian next week when we record another episode and even less authoritarian at the end of the year. And just try to achieve more and more of that authoritative service model, which we all aim to strive to achieve. And always

SPEAKER_01 1:05:00

analyze responsibly. Cheers, man. ABA on Tap is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.