Response to Name Interventions for Staff and Caregivers: Inside JABA 22

03/31/25 • 87 min

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The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

This is not a show about teaching eye contact. We'll get to that in a bit.

First though, I should note that the 22nd installment of the Inside JABA Series is coming out comically late. I apologize for getting us off schedule. The good news is that we already have a great paper to discuss for the 23rd Inside JABA episode that I think you're going to love, so I hope to have that one out later on in the spring.

Back to this episode. Drs. Danny Conine and Jenn Fritz join me to discuss a paper Danny wrote with his colleagues called, "Evaluating a screening-to-intervention model with caregiver training for response to name among children with autism."

There are so many great things about this paper, and listeners will be able to tell this from my enthusiasm in discussing it with Danny and Jenn.

As I noted above, this is not about teaching eye contact, but rather, a more generalized repertoire of responding to one's name (RTN). We get into why these two things are different, and, as Danny tells it, RTN repertoires have many benefits that directly impact learning and safety.

In this paper, he describes an elegant assessment and intervention that his research team implemented to develop RTN in the study's participants. In carrying out this study, they also employed a simple and effective assent withdrawal component, which we get into.

Then, they took what the skills they developed in a clinic setting, and taught the participant's caregivers to implement RTN procedures at home. As such, this paper provides a great example of how to generalize skills across settings. Very cool!

Along the way, Danny provides practical tips clinicians can consider for their own practice. All of this to say, I'm hoping you'll agree that the wait for this episode will be worth it!

Resources discussed in this podcast:

Conine, et al. (2025). Evaluating a screening-to-intervention model with caregiver training for response to name among children with autism.
Conine, et al. (2020). Assessment and treatment of response to name for children with autism spectrum disorder: Toward an efficient intervention model.
Conine, Vollmer, and Bolívar (2019). Response to name in children with autism: Treatment, generalization, and maintenance.
BOP Session 212 with Tim Hackenberg.
Luczynski and Hanley (2013). Prevention of problem behavior by teaching functional communication and self-control skills to preschoolers.
The Verbal Behavior Approach, by Dr. Mary Barbera.
Links to Danny's faculty page, Research Gate profile, LinkedIn, and his lab's Instagram.
Jenn's faculty page, Research Gate profile, LinkedIn, and the UHCL ABA Program page.

If you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing with friends and colleagues!

This is not a show about teaching eye contact. We'll get to that in a bit.

There are so many great things about this paper, and listeners will be able to tell this from my enthusiasm in discussing it with Danny and Jenn.

Along the way, Danny provides practical tips clinicians can consider for their own practice. All of this to say, I'm hoping you'll agree that the wait for this episode will be worth it!

Resources discussed in this podcast:

Conine, et al. (2025). Evaluating a screening-to-intervention model with caregiver training for response to name among children with autism.
Conine, et al. (2020). Assessment and treatment of response to name for children with autism spectrum disorder: Toward an efficient intervention model.
Conine, Vollmer, and Bolívar (2019). Response to name in children with autism: Treatment, generalization, and maintenance.
BOP Session 212 with Tim Hackenberg.
Luczynski and Hanley (2013). Prevention of problem behavior by teaching functional communication and self-control skills to preschoolers.
The Verbal Behavior Approach, by Dr. Mary Barbera.
Links to Danny's faculty page, Research Gate profile, LinkedIn, and his lab's Instagram.
Jenn's faculty page, Research Gate profile, LinkedIn, and the UHCL ABA Program page.

If you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing with friends and colleagues!

Previous Episode

Ethical Decision Making in Applied Behavior Analysis: Session 294 with Ilene Schwartz and Beth Kelly

Drs. Ilene Schwartz and Beth Kelly joined me to discuss the never ending conundrum of navigating ethical dilemmas. As Ilene points out in the podcast, most people know right from wrong, but the types of dilemmas BCBAs encounter are what she calls 'right vs. right' dilemmas...

Therefore, ethical practice requires a continuous decision making process. And in my guests' view, this is not a matter of decontextualized rule-following. In this podcast, we get into these nuances, using Ilene and Beth's newly published book, Ethical Decision Making in Applied Behavior Analysis.

We also discussed a framework for articulating one's values and principles that you might find helpful in your work setting.

Resources for this podcast:

Ethical Decision Making in Applied Behavior Analysis.
Rosenberg and Scwhartz (2018). Guidance or Compliance: What Makes an Ethical Behavior Analyst?
Kelly, Greeny, Rosenberg and Schwartz (2020). When Rules Are Not Enough: Developing Principles to Guide Ethical Conduct.
Dr. Schwartz's faculty page.
Dr. Kelly's faculty page.
BOP's CEUs, with many Ethics events.

This podcast is brought to you with the support of:

The Profound Autism Summit. The Profound Autism Summit is a two-day conference taking place on April 10th and 11th in Boston, MA. Following on the massive success of the 2024 Summit, the 2025 event brings together leaders from the areas of research, medicine, treatment, advocacy, and education to discuss the needs and support of those with Profound Autism across disciplines and throughout the lifespan.
CEUs from Behavioral Observations. Learn from your favorite podcast guests while you're commuting, walking the dog, or whatever else you do while listening to podcasts. New events are being added all the time, so check them out here.
The Behavioral Toolbox. Check out our courses for school-based and other behavioral professionals, including our newest one, Motivational Interviewing: Getting Educator Buy-In.
The Verbal Behavior Conference. Whether you attend in-person in Austin, TX, or online via BehaviorLive, you're going to love this year's Verbal Behavior Conference! Click here to get all the details!
Behavior University. Their mission is to provide university quality professional development for the busy Behavior Analyst. Learn about their CEU offerings, including their 8-hour Supervision Course, as well as their RBT offerings over at behavioruniversity.com/observations. Don't forget to use the coupon code, PODCAST to save at checkout!

Next Episode

Improving Access to Medical Care for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities: Session 296 with Brandon Franklin

Brandon Franklin returns to the podcast after a very long hiatus. You'll have to go back to Session 36 to hear his first appearance as a matter of fact.

It turns out that he's been doing a lot of innovative clinical work in that time. Currently, he is the Chief Behavior Analyst for the Lee Specialty Clinic and a Behavioral Consultant at Kramer Behavioral Health. In these roles, Brandon has implemented various interventions to help individuals with intellectual disabilities access routine medical and dental care.

If you're not familiar with this topic, it might sound pretty mundane, but as you'll hear, these populations really struggle to attend and participate in routine medical appointments, which, not surprisingly, has downstream negative health consequences. As such, interventions that improve on the current statistics can truly be considered life-saving.

In this podcast, we get into the following:

Common phobias associated with medical treatments.
Brandon's personal experience with aerophobia (the fear of flying), and what he did to improve it.
The basics of desensitization strategies.
How he and his team members use these strategies to improve the rate of successful medical appointment visits.
And finally, the research on this topic that he is doing for his dissertation.

Brandon has generously compiled a list of references, which you can find here. He's passionate about this topic and is willing to talk with anyone about it, so feel free to hit him up on LinkedIn.

Here's all of Brandon's contact info.
Here's all the desensitization resources you could ask for.

This podcast is brought to you by:

Frontera. Consider taking a demo of Frontera's Assessment Builder and see how the ethical application of AI technologies can help you serve clients and save you time! Your first assessment report is free. And if you use code BOP25 you’ll get an additional five assessments for just $100. So head to fronterahealth.com to check it out!
The Profound Autism Summit. The Profound Autism Summit is a two-day conference taking place on April 10th and 11th in Boston, MA. Following on the massive success of the 2024 Summit, the 2025 event brings together leaders from the areas of research, medicine, treatment, advocacy, and education to discuss the needs and support of those with Profound Autism across disciplines and throughout the lifespan.
HRIC Recruting. Cut out the middleman and speak directly with Barbara Voss, who's been placing BCBAs in great jobs all across the US for 15 years.
CEUs from Behavioral Observations. Learn from your favorite podcast guests while you're commuting, walking the dog, or whatever else you do while listening to podcasts. New events are being added all the time, so check them out here.
The Behavioral Toolbox. Check out our courses for school-based and other behavioral professionals, including our newest one, Motivational Interviewing: Getting Educator Buy-In.