BOP REWIND: A Constructional Approach for Solving Behavioral Challenges, with Claire St. Peter

The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

Hey everybody I hope you're having a great summer so far, or whatever season it happens to be whenever you listen to this episode.

Some of the things I've been doing recently is going back through the behavioral observations archives and giving episodes a second or third listen. One of those episodes was Session 193 that I published in July 2022, and my guest was Dr. Claire Saint Peter.

In that episode we talked about the constructional approach, as it were, and how it relates to solving behavior problems. This topic has been getting a lot of attention lately. When I was at ABAI in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, I attended several talks on the constructional approach, which prompted me to listen to this episode again.

And when I did listen to this episode for a second time I felt that there were so many really helpful pieces of information that I wanted to republish it. What I did with this episode is essentially started after the part in which Claire talked about her background and getting into behavior analysis.

Now if you want to go back and listen to that story, and I think it is a good story by the way as it's a bit of a microcosm of the history of applied behavior analysis, you can certainly do so. However, for the purposes of brevity, I decided just cut out that introductory section so the overall experience is a bit more focused, especially for those of us who are listening to this for a second, third, or fourth time.

With that said, I really hope you listen to this episode and it's entirety there are so many great nuggets have information. Although we talk about the application of the constructional approach to a student in a school setting, I am sure that you will make connections to all sorts of applications.

I will also make this episode eligible for a continuing education unit, as I have been doing with many older episodes as well. So if you are looking to get caught up on your continuing education, go to behavioralobservations.com to see the nearly 60 episodes we have available for your continuing education.

The last thing I'll say about this episode is that this is not the last thing I'll say about the constructional approach. I guess I'm saying that out loud for some accountability, because of said this before, but I want to have some other guests on to talk about this because I think it's an interesting way to look at behavior analysis and it's ability to address problems of social importance.

Here are links to some of the resources we mentioned:

• The original Session 193

• Claire's lab website

• Claire's Google Scholar Page

• Goldiamond (1974): Toward a constructional approach to social problems: ethical and constitutional issues raised by applied behavior analysis

• More Goldiamond: A Programming Contingency Analysis of Mental Health

• Layng (2009). The Search for an Effective Clinical Behavior Analysis: The Nonlinear Thinking of Israel Goldiamond

• Romano, St. Peter, Milyko, Mesches, and Foreman (2021). Incorporating Curricular Revision to Treat Escape-Maintained Behavior for Children with ADHD

• Mammacare

• Word of the Podcast

• Inside JABA 7: There's No Such Thing as a Bad Boy, with Pat Friman

• Session 158: Motivational Interviewing with Dr. Jim Murphy

• Friman (2021). There is no such thing as a bad boy: The Circumstances View of problem behavior

• Johnston, Pennypacker, and Green: Strategies and Tactics for Behavioral Research and Practice (note: Amazon Associates link).

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