As far as podcast go, this episode was kind of tough to write a headline for (a task that I probably devote way too much time to doing!). My guest in Session 177, John McElwee, has been in the field - to paraphrase a line from Aubrey Daniels - before there was a field.

John has had a long and productive career that's had some very interesting twists and turns. He's still going strong these days, and learning new things to help individuals with a wide variety of developmental and behavioral challenges.

With that in mind, I suppose an overarching theme in this episode could be thought of as how John charted his own career path. In other words, by being open to new experiences, and actively investing in his professional development, he has been able to do some really interesting things in the field of ABA. So for early career professionals, try to listen to this episode with this in mind.

In this episode, we discuss how John got into the field, the he took a detour in his graduate training to work as a union electrician, the work he did in the area of marriage and family systems, his connections with folks like Drs. Alan Kazdin and Russell Barkely, and lots more.

But in the latter half of the show, we spend a considerable time discussing how John serendipitously discovered Relational Frame Theory by chatting up Dermot and Yvonne Barnes-Holmes at an ABAI conference, and how he saw the benefits of using this approach with individuals with ASD in an Early Intervention context.

Along the way, we discuss the upcoming webinar series that John's doing with Peak Behavioral. If you're interested in learning more about this, it starts in March 2022. You can find information about this webinar series as well as individualized coaching opportunities with John through Peak Behavioral Services' website: www.pkservice.org/purchase. If this is something you're interested in and you'd like to save a few bucks in the process, use the promo code "podcast22" at checkout to receive a discounted price of $79 per webinar.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Check out John's webinar series with Peak Behavior!
• Oregon Social Learning Center.
• Dr. Russell Barkley.
• Dr. Alan Kazdin.
• The Purple Book.*
• Brief Report: The Training and Assessment of Relational Precursors and Abilities (TARPA): A Preliminary Analysis (Moran, Stewart, McElwee, and Ming, 2010).
• Using RFT to Promote Generative Language, Volume 1 (Ming, Stewart, and McElwee).

This podcast is brought to you with the support of:

• The Whoop Strap! I've been wearing the Whoop Strap for over a year now, and I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed getting quantitative information on all aspects of my health, including sleep analytics, heart rate, along with heart rate variability, calorie burn, exercise intensity, and Whoop's proprietary "strain" score. I could extol this neat device's virtues indefinitely to you, but instead, you can go check it out for yourself. To get your first month free, head over to behavioralobservations.com/whoop!
• Institutional Tier Patron Greenspace Behavioral Technology. Greenspace behavior offers cutting edge supervisor coaching, performance and competency-based trainings, and organizational supports for new BCBA and trainees. Find out how you can optimize your supervision practices, improve clinical outcomes, and increase employee satisfaction at Greenspacebehavior.com.
• And of course, the aforementioned Peak Behavioral, where you can sign up for John's webinar series using the discount code, podcast22 at checkout.

In the 10th (tenth!!!) installment of the Inside JABA Series, Dr. Linda LeBlanc and I are joined by Drs. Jenn Austin and Dithu Rajaraman to discuss the paper they co-authored with Drs. Holly Gover, Tony Cammilleri, David Donnelly, and Greg Hanley.

The paper is titled, Towards Trauma-Informed Applications of Behavior Analysis, and you can find it in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis.

If you haven't seen the paper yet, check out the abstract below:

Despite a growing acknowledgement of the importance of understanding the impacts of trauma on therapeutic approaches across human service disciplines, discussions of trauma have been relatively infrequent in the behavior analytic literature. In this paper, we delineate some of the barriers to discussing and investigating trauma in applied behavior analysis (ABA) and describe how the core commitments of trauma-informed care could be applied to behavior analysis. We then provide some examples of how trauma-informed care might be incorporated into ABA practice. We conclude by suggesting opportunities to approach trauma as a viable avenue for behavior analytic research and argue that omitting trauma-informed care from ABA could be detrimental not only to the public perception of ABA, but to the effectiveness of our assessment and treatment procedures.

Rajaraman et al. (2022)

During the discussion, we covered:

• How this large group of authors became connected.
• What motivated them to write this paper.
• What literatures outside of Behavior Analysis informed their point of view.
• How this paper is a "Big Idea Paper."
• Why Behavior Analysts may shy away from discussing trauma.
• The core commitments of Trauma-Informed ABA.
• The parallels between Compassionate Care and Trauma-Informed ABA.
• The role of Respondent Conditioning.
• Whether a Trauma-specific certification for ABA providers would be helpful.

If you haven't done so already, I do recommend going back in the catalog and checking out Session 131 with Dr. Camille Kolu. As a matter of fact, I've been in contact with her recently, and we're planning on a follow up episode, so if you're interested in learning more about the implications of adverse experiences as they relate to the practice of Behavior Analysis, simply stay tuned.

As with the other shows in the Inside JABA Series, this episode is available for BACB Continuing Education. If you'd like to learn more about how to access these podcasts for your professional development needs, click here.

Also, if you enjoy the Inside JABA content, please consider subscribing to the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Compared to other journals, it's quite a bargain price-wise, and it helps to support the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Resourced discussed in this episode:

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma*
• Toxic Childhood Stress*
• Compassionate Care in Behavior Analytic Treatment. Taylor, LeBlanc, and Nosik (2018).
• Centers for Disease Control ACES page.

As noted in the first few minutes of this episode, Dr. Florence DiGennaro Reed has been one of the most-requested guests by audience members, and I'm thrilled to have her back on the show for a one-on-one chat. 

Dr. DiGennaro Reed, better known as Flo by friends and colleagues, is the Chairperson of the Department of Applied Behavioral Science as well as the Director of The Performance Management Laboratory at the University of Kansas. 

In this interview, we chat about her unique early experiences in Behavior Analysis and the fascinating research that she's conducting at KU. We also spent a good chunk of time talking about meetings. I know that may sound boring, but hear me out... we talk about the attributes of bad meetings, and conversely how to run effective meetings. We also talk about how to determine whether that meeting you had really could have bene an email (insert meme here ;-). 

We then segued into discussing navigating power differentials in the workplace, having difficult conversations in the workplace, optimizing Behavioral Skills Training sequences, and learning essential professional repertoires for today's BCBAs. 

We close the public feed of this interview with some fantastic advice for the newly-minted BCBA (or BCBAs of all experience levels for that matter!)

For Patreon subscribers, we spend some additional content time discussing how to present effectively via Zoom or other conferencing platforms. 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• The Performance Management Laboratory.
• An Introduction to Behavior Analysis (disclosure: Amazon Affiliate Link). 
• Meeting vs. Email decision chart. 
• Planning and Leading Effective Meetings (LeBlanc and Nosik, 2019). 
• Enhancing the training integrity of human service staff using pyramidal behavioral skills training (Erath et al, 2020). 
• Training human service staff to implement behavioral skills training using a video-based intervention (Erath, DiGennaro Reed, and Blackman, 2021). 
• Functional Assessment and Intervention for Organizational Behavior Change: Improving the Timeliness of Staff Meetings at a Human Services Organization (Fienup et al, 2013). 
• Crucial Conversations (disclosure: Amazon Affiliate Link).
• ACT Bullseye Exercise. 
• Reddit ABA page.

Session 175 is brought to you with support from:

• HRIC Recruiting. Barb Voss has been placing BCBAs in permanent positions throughout the US for just about a decade, and has been in the business more generally for 30 years. When you work with HRIC, you work directly with Barb, thereby accessing highly personalized service. So if you're about to graduate, you're looking for a change of pace, or you just want to know if the grass really is greener on the other side, head over to HRIColorado.com to schedule a confidential chat right away.
• Behavior University. (who incidentally is sponsoring the Stone Soup Conference!) Their mission is to provide university quality professional development for the busy Behavior Analyst. Learn about their CEU offerings, including their brand new 8-hour Supervision Course, as well as their RBT offerings over at behavioruniversity.com/observations.