The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

In Session 159 of The Behavioral Observations Podcast, Michael Maloney returns to the show. We spend a few minutes catching up since the last time we spoke ( see Session 129 ), but then pivot to his recent collaboration with the Canadian charity organization, the  Amorak Society . With help from the  Rotary International's  literacy initiative, these partners deployed Michael's reading program, Th...

Rather than writing up a compelling introduction to this episode, I'm tempted to say, "just listen to the whole thing!" and leave it there. In Session 158, I chat with one of my oldest friends and Auburn classmate (obligatory "War Eagle!"),  Dr. Jim Murphy  from the University of Memphis, about the impossibly-broad topic of Substance Use Disorders (SUDs). Fortunately for us, Jim has spent over 20...

Dr. Becca Tagg from  Del Mar Behavioral Health  joins me to discuss the unique approach her agency uses to train early-career BCBAs. This conversation was inspired by the interview I conducted with  Dr. Mary Jane Weiss  last year, in which we talked about how cool it would be if the field had an ABA equivalent of a medical residency model, so that BCBAs can learn about practicing with a variety of...

Dr. Adithyan "Dithu" Rajaraman joins me in Session 156 to discuss his work in the Practical Functional Assessment/Skills-Based Treatment literature.  Dithu is a former student of pod-fave Dr. Greg Hanley, and as one might expect, Dithu approaches his work with a similar degree of humility and open-mindedness. He earned his Ph. D. at Western New England University, and is now an Assistant Professor...

In previous appearances on this podcast and elsewhere, Pat Friman has told the story of Father Flanagan, founder of BoysTown. According to Pat, Father Flanagan often made the following statement when describing his philosophy of helping troubled youths: "there is no such thing as a bad boy, only bad environments, bad modeling, and bad teaching." For the Spring 2021 issue of the Journal of Applied...

I had a great chat with fellow Auburn University alum Dr. Alice Shillingsburg. Alice has been doing great work in the field for decades, as you can see from her bio below: Dr. Shillingsburg currently serves as Sr. Vice President of Children's Clinical Services and Training at May Institute. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from Auburn University and completed her predoctoral internship...

In Session 153, , which I'll get to in just a minute. But to set the context for our conversation, I'd like to start by noticing that I often see the quote by Skinner, "When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it," posted on social media quite frequently. In fact, when I plugged that quote into Google, it returned almost 9 million results ! Now, I could be wrong abou...

Are you consulting Google to determine how to keep your clients and co-workers safe in this seemingly never-ending Covid-19 pandemic? Well, lucky for you, my guests in Session 152 have done the heavy lifting and thoroughly researched best practices in risk-mitigation in ABA clinical practice. My guests for this episode include Drs.  Zahra Hajiaghamohseni ,  Mary Caruso-Anderson ,  Jennifer Sweeny...

In Session 151, I chat with  Dr. Nasiah Cirincione-Ulezi  about a range of topics, but we spent the majority of the time discussing her recent paper in Behavior Analysis in Practice titled:  Black Women and Barriers to Leadership in ABA . Nasiah is the CEO of two organizations,  Ulezi, LLC  and  Pivot 2 Inclusion . If you haven't read her paper yet, please pause this show and go do so. It's a sobe...

In Session 150 of The Behavioral Observations Podcast, I got a chance to finally interview Dr. Vince Carbone. In our conversation we covered a lot of interesting topics. Instead of covering the ins and outs of Verbal Behavior - the topic it's fair to say that Vince is best known for - we talked about the history and evolution of the field of Behavior Analysis. Specifically, we discussed how he tra...

I've known that the 5th anniversary of the podcast has been coming up for quite some time now, and I've been wracking my brain on how best to commemorate this milestone. After considering a few different options, I eventually decided that there was no better place to start than by looking back at the first episode of Behavioral Observations, my interview with Dr. Greg Hanley. In this episode, we d...

So the title of this show may be a bit of a misnomer. Let me explain... In Session 148, Shira Karpel and Shayna Gaunt, founders of  HowToABA.com , join me to talk about one of my favorite topics: supporting the newly-minted BCBA. As you might know by now, that's very often my closing question of the podcast. In this episode however, we pretty much spent the entire time talking about strategies for...

In this episode of Behavioral Observations, I chat with Drs. Florence DiGennaro-Reed, Derek Reed, and Gregory Madden. While we talked a bit about their new book,  An Introduction to Behavior Analysis , we framed the discussion around the process of teaching itself, textbook notwithstanding. Before getting into the content itself, let me introduce our guests: Dr. DiGennaro-Reed  is an Associate Pro...

In the sixth edition of the Inside JABA Series, I'm joined by Inside JABA regulars Drs. Linda LeBlanc and Claire St. Peter, as well as Dr. Jesse Dallery, to talk about  the paper  he and his colleagues published in the  latest issue  of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. This paper fits nicely in JABA's ongoing series on Public Health and Telehealth, and is a great example of the potential...

In Session 145, I speak with Deidre Sturm and Anne Denning from The Consultants for Children , an agency that supports individuals with ASD based out of Colorado. Together, Anne and Deidre tell the story of how they completely revamped their agency's approach to supporting individuals with problem behavior. After not seeing much success with their existing functional assessment practices, they dov...

I've been wanting to interview Dr. Carl Hart ever since I first heard him speak at the 2015 Mass ABA conference. Put differently, when asked who would be a 'bucket list' interview, Carl Hart was usually the first name that I answered with. Ever since learning about Carl's work, I've admired his ability and willingness to advance science-based arguments in the popular press media. If this is your f...

In Session 143, I chat with John Capodilupo, co-founder of Whoop, the maker of the Whoop strap system I've been talking about for the last several episodes. At the risk of sounding like an informercial for this neat product, I've really enjoyed using the Whoop strap for the last few months. If you aren't familiar with it, the Whoop strap is a wearable device that tracks all sorts of cool metrics,...

My friends over at ABA Inside Track - Robert Parry-Crews, Diana Parry-Crews, and Jackie Macdonald, got together for our third annual year-in-review collaboration. And suffice to say, what a year it has been. In this episode, we discuss the events of 2020, both in the world of Behavior Analysis and beyond. We spoke at great length about the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the provision of ser...

In Session 141 I speak with Sasha Shtern and Dr. Eric Moody about using the Goally Learning Device with families. Sasha is the CEO of Goally and Eric holds the title of Research Professor at the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities . Goally is an Android-based stand-alone device that allows users to program visuals schedules, create task analyses, manage token economies, and even log problem behavio...

In Session 140, Dr. John Michael Guercio joins me to talk about best practices for supporting adults with Autism. He is well suited to do just this, as John has been working with adults with various developmental disabilities for decades. He is currently the Clinical Director for  Benchmark Human Services  in St. Louis, Missouri, and is the author of the recently published book, " Assessment of Ad...

A few months ago, a few BCBA's from the  Boulder Valley School District  reached out to me and offered to share the story of how they are fielding a team of Behavior Analysts in the public school setting. As someone who has spent a career consulting to public schools, I was instantly sold. I believe that as if this recording, the BVSD employs about 10 BCBA's, and in Session 139, I'm joined by four...

Shortly after I published  Session 124  on Police Academy training with John O'Neill, Tina Long, a BCBA from Northern Virginia, emailed me to share the outreach work that she has done with her local police department in Fairfax County. Specifically, in the wake of the nationwide re-examination of the role of policing, Tina felt compelled share what she has learned about the ACT Matrix with local l...

I can't believe it's been  over two years  since Andy Bondy of PECS fame came on the show! How time flies... This episode was inspired by a Facebook post Andy made a few weeks ago talking about how mand repertoires go beyond simply requesting preferred items. There were some interesting exchanges that followed Andy's post, and upon reading them, it occurred to me that this would make for a fun and...

Dr. Kim Berens ( @KimberlyBerens5 ) joins me for a third time to discuss her new book,  Blind Spots: Why Students Fail and the Science That Can Save Them .* In this show, we talk about her motivation to write this book, what she believes is wrong with the current approach to educating children in the United States, and what can be done to remedy this situation. Like our recent episode with  Amelia...