Podcast Episode 15 Behaviour Change - Necessity is the Mother of Invention Dr. Ron Van Houten, Bobbi Hoadley, Cathy Knights ABA technical concepts covered in this podcast: Behaviour change procedures; pattern analyses; measurement; Functional Analysis; punishment procedures; negative reinforcement by reducing time and effort; positive punishment using delay and exertion; motivating operations and establishing operations; contextual fit; visual contextual cues; efficiency; group contingencies; maintenance   Bobbi and Cathy: When we have a problem that isn’t being solved, we create an intervention, or an invention, that will address the problem. The person we are talking to is such an interesting man, his name is Doctor Ron Van Houten and he is an ABA doctor and a professor at Western Michigan University. He has done work all over North American and Europe in traffic safety and how to decrease the conflicts that create near misses and people getting hurt. He has changed the behaviour of both drivers and pedestrians using Behaviour Analysis. Ron sets up solutions that engineer the behavior of everybody in those situations to mitigate the risk.

 Ron: There were studies done that show that cars coming up to a crosswalk don’t have a good line of sight. Places in NY city a number of people crushed to death by trucks. So they put an arrow up high but it didn’t work. One simple solution was staggering the stop lines. Cathy: There are times when I would jay-walk, I think to myself ‘could I not have walked down to the corner to the crosswalk?” Ron: In essence, we know that people don’t like to wait. We find out where people would like to cross. Pedestrian generators. You can try educating with behavioural solutions. Bobbi: I would think all good functional analysis of behaviour is doing that – find  out where the behaviour is going and then decide whether you can actually change it or whether it’s better to go with the behaviour and just change the circumstances. Always juggling the reinforcement. In my situation, I measure a person against themselves. For you, you are dealing with people and conflicts and they all want efficiency. Ron: I wanted to get people to not use the elevator when they didn’t need it. I tried putting information about health benefits of using the stairs. Didn’t change. So I increased the wait time on the elevator and everyone who could use the stairs went to the stairs. By increasing their effort and time, I changed their behaviour. I did some things for the National Traffic Safety Administration, and we wanted to get people to wear seatbelts. I gave a survey, and sure enough put them into the car and baseline showed they wore their belts. Then we moved it to treatment, which was moving the car increase speed, if you buckled your belt, that force gradually went away. You have to repeat the reminders. A lot of people don’t buckle their seats before moving the car. You do a repeat reminder after they’re going. Pedal force-gets 100% seatbelt use, whereas before it was a delay. I used GM’s brake shift, to then get seatbelt reminder, and if they don’t buckle they can’t shift immediately, they have to wait 8 seconds. We had big increases in seatbelt use. They still have some choice. One of the cities in Florida, were having children struck going to and from school. I did the analysis and said 1) you don’t have a lot of sidewalks near the school. I looked and people were in such a hurry dropping kids off. Motivating operation-community wants to do something about it. 2) Reduce speeding when kids are going to and from school. Educate parents about kids getting struck, needing to be under speed limit or enforce it aggressively. For years, no more children were struck going to and from school. You need to prepare people before the change that they have to accept it. Bobbi: