POOGI for ABA

I have briefly and not-very-seriously studied a variety of martial arts. But as I started to study behavior analysis, I had learned enough about the martial arts to become very skeptical that most martial arts students would be successful in an actual situation that required self-defense. That’s because in martial arts class, you study under very contrived situations (e.g., put your arm like this, OK now grab my wrist). Now, after a long period of training, it can look really impressive. There might be many benefits (e.g., social, health, discipline, focus). But would the skills a student develops in a typical martial arts class work in a real-life self-defense situation? In my view, it’s unlikely but pretty hard to do the research or get that data.

Now in behavior analysis, pretty much the only thing we are interested in is getting the behavior to work well for the client in real world situations. In some programs we use practices that are very contrived (like a martial arts class):

• Get the child’s attention first
• Ask what do you want to work for?
• Make sure you speak clearly
• Provide tokens contingent on correct responses
• Use an errorless teaching procedure
• Contrive the opportunity to mand
• And on, and on, and on

Now there is nothing wrong with any of the above practices as a training technique. But I worry that we are sometimes satisfied with the impressive looking demonstration (like a martial arts class) without doing much fading of the types of procedures used above. Or actually checking if the skills we taught work in the real world.

We are different than a martial arts class. We can go and see if the child is requesting with mom, having conversations with peers, or learning cognitive and academic skills in the general education classroom easily (well relatively easily compared to seeing whether self-defense skills are effective in the real world!)

It is heartbreaking how often I’ve seen skills that looked amazing under specialized sets of conditions but don’t work under real world conditions. It is easy to fool yourself that everything is wonderful if you never leave the contrived situation. Even worse, when it doesn’t work in the real world after we have spent enormous time, effort, and emotional energy, we get upset. There is a tendency to blame others (e.g., the parents wouldn’t implement it, the school won’t support the program).

In order to Poogi, you have to have the right criterion for success. That criterion is always the question: Does this skill work under real world conditions? If it doesn’t work (or worse you haven’t checked), you aren’t finished yet.

Many studies suggest that training peers to interact with children with autism can be an effective strategy to teach social skills. Training peers has a lot of potential for many reasons: It can create social motivation as well as many opportunities to practice, it sets up a realistic context to practice, and it can produce natural reinforcers. Sometimes these skills generalize and the children with autism start using their new social skills with other children too.

But sometimes the skills don’t generalize and other interventions are needed. The key risk is that sometimes we can be easily fooled by data that looks like the child is making amazing progress. The data may look great as long as the child is interacting with trained peers. The key point is you don’t really know if you have anything until you bring in different, untrained peers. In other words, sometimes you can’t be sure whose behavior has changed. Was it the typically developing child that was trained to prompt and interact, or did the child with autism develop real skills? Without natural contingencies the behavior is unlikely to maintain.

The same logic can easily be applied to typically developing children who were not specifically trained, but just naturally prompt and reinforce appropriate behaviors. These children can help produce amazing benefits, just be careful not to be fooled those data. It may be that real skills have developed, but you don’t know until you check. As soon as you hear someone say, “S/He is amazing with him” your radar should go up. Interactions like these are often a great start to helping developing social skills- just don’t get fooled that they produced more improvement than they really did.

Being brutally honest with how much progress you have actually made is crucial to the Poogi.

I went to the dentist and he said, “Barry everything looks good, but er um, er – Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Have you been punched in the face?”

Of course. Lots of times. Occupational hazard.

My dentist went on to tell me that he couldn’t tell how long ago it might have happened, but definitely looks like a punch. Probably have to replace that tooth. Expensive. Yuck.

If you have been doing this awhile, you have probably had feces thrown at you, been punched, bitten, scratched, kicked, spit on, or had other pleasant work-day experiences. Now, as our treatments have been Poogi-ing over the last 25 years, this happens less and less. But episodes like this are still inevitable from time to time. In all likelihood you handle those punches in the face well. You can remain calm, act professionally, ensure safety, and provide effective treatment. But if my experience is common, there is another kind of punch in the face that you probably don’t handle nearly as well: Criticism.

Despite being models of professionalism in dramatic situations, let someone criticize the prompting method or the data collection procedure and watch behavior analysts freak out and engage in absurd unprofessional behaviors.

An important behavior if you really want to be on a POOGI is to carefully listen to criticism and use it to improve. Sure, sometimes the critic is wrong and you want to ignore that. But criticism is often a gift. If you really care about the POOGI, you should reinforce when people criticize. That’s how it works. You have to be able to take both types of punches.