Understanding Repetitive Behavior: Session 299 with Bill Ahearn

Dr. Bill Ahearn joins me in Session 299 of Behavioral Observation. I met Bill a few times at conferences and I'm so glad we finally had a chance to sit down and record a podcast together.

Bill is the Director of Research at The New England Center for Children. Long time listeners may recall that NECC sponsored a series of episodes, and in this podcast, we talked about some of the great research that has come out of that storied institution.

As an aside, if you want to learn more about NECC, particularly working at NECC, you can find more information about that here.

We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, including:

• Bill's early experiences as a grad student and clinician.
• His early work in addressing feeding problems.
• The research that he and his colleagues have conducted at NECC.
• How he construes stereotypic and self-injurious behavior as being forms of repetitive behavior.
• What he's learned about addressing stereotypy, including when and when not to intervene.
• We talk at length about Response Interruption and Redirection, particularly when it is and isn't necessary as an intervention.
• The behavioral interpretation of anxiety, and interventions that he and his team have brought to bear on related repertoires.
• I ask a few lighter questions on some topics of mutual interest (you'll have to listen towards the end to hear that).
• If you listen to nothing else from this podcast, towards the end of the show, Bill talks about why he is proud to be a Behavior Analyst. Please listen to that segment, as I think he makes some excellent points that are more than worth sharing.

We also talked about tons of papers. I've done my best to track as many down as possible.

• Piazza et al. (2000). An evaluation of the effects of matched stimuli on behaviors maintained by automatic reinforcement.
• Rapp and Vollmer (2005). Stereotypy I: A review of behavioral assessment and treatment.
• Ahearn et al. (2007). Assessing and treating vocal stereotypy in children with autism.
• Colón et al. (2012). The effects of verbal operant training and response interruption and redirection on appropriate and inappropriate vocalizations.
• Rodriguez et al. (2013). Arranging and ordering in autism spectrum disorder: Characteristics, severity, and environmental correlates.
• Steinhauser et al. (2021). Examining stereotypy in naturalistic contexts: Differential reinforcement and context-specific redirection.
• Moore et al. (2022). Assessing and Treating Anxiety in Individuals with Autism.
• Fergus (2024). Functional Analysis and Delineating Subtypes of Restricted Repetitive Behavior in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

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