The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

What does it look like to assess and treat severe problem behavior when safety concerns have become so significant that a student can no longer participate successfully in their typical school environment?
In this episode, Dr. Cory Whelan joins me to discuss his work at Seasons Behavioral Services, where he and Dr. Kara LaCroix have developed an intensive model for assessing and treating dangerous behavior while helping students build the skills they'll need to return to less restrictive settings.
Cory brings an unusual perspective to this work. He is dually certified as a speech-language pathologist and behavior analyst, and his career has taken him from challenging school environments in Washington, D.C., to doctoral training at Western New England University, where he worked with Dr. Greg Hanley and became involved in the development and application of practical functional assessment and skill-based treatment approaches.
We talk about how Seasons works with students who may be waiting for an out-of-district placement—or whose behavior has become too dangerous for their current educational setting—and what happens during their approximately three-month intensive treatment model.
Cory describes how his team uses a universal protocol when students first arrive, with an emphasis on minimizing evocative situations and creating conditions in which students can safely engage with staff before assessment begins. From there, we walk through their approach to caregiver interviews, practical functional assessment, and skill-based treatment.
We also spend quite a bit of time discussing something that can sometimes get lost when talking about highly technical treatment procedures: clinical judgment.
Cory explains why he trains staff not simply to follow a protocol mechanically, but to continually evaluate what is happening in front of them and make decisions that prioritize the safety and dignity of the person they're serving. We discuss what that looks like when problem behavior occurs unexpectedly, why backing off from a demand isn't necessarily a clinical failure, and how thoughtful decision-making fits within function-based treatment.
We also get into some of the nuances of conducting effective functional assessment interviews, including:
Building rapport before jumping into questions about problem behavior.
Identifying precursors and subtle indicators that a situation is becoming difficult.
Asking about activities caregivers or staff may have stopped attempting altogether.
Using clinical judgment alongside structured interview tools.
What it means when an analysis doesn't produce the behavior you expected to see.
Finally, we discuss one of the hardest parts of intensive behavioral treatment: generalization and transition. A student may make tremendous progress in a highly trained treatment environment, but what happens when they move to a school or program with different staff, resources, and contingencies? Cory shares both the successes and limitations they've encountered when trying to support receiving programs and maintain treatment gains across settings.
If you're interested in practical functional assessment and skill-based treatment—particularly how these approaches work with severe behavior in real-world clinical and educational environments—I think you'll get a lot out of this conversation.
Resources Mentioned
Seasons Behavioral Services (which, by the way, is an awesome place to work!)
Practical Functional Assessment resources - we cited numerous papers in the PFA/SBT literature. Rather than link them all, you can find downloadable PDFs of all of them here.
OG podcasts on PFA/SBT to get you up to speed. Sessions 1, 7, 20, 94, 160, 219, and 283. I could cite many more, but these will give you a great start.
Shoutout to The Hawaii Association for Behavior Analysis.
Sponsor Shoutouts
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 BOP Patreon. Do you want to get the show ad-free and before everyone else? Click here to learn how!
Safety-Care is a crisis prevention and de-escalation training program designed for professionals who support individuals with challenging behavior. More than 300,000 professionals have been trained in Safety-Care's evidence-based approach to recognizing early warning signs and responding with confidence. To learn more, visit QBS.com/podcast.
The Behavioral Toolbox International. Check out our courses for school-based and other behavioral professionals, including our newest one, Motivational Interviewing: Getting Educator Buy-In.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a colleague and leaving a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Gestalt Language Processing (GLP) and Natural Language Acquisition (NLA) have become extraordinarily popular in speech-language pathology, particularly in conversations about autistic children who use echolalia.
But what exactly is a "Gestalt Language Processor?" How would we know if someone is one? And perhaps most importantly, what does the research actually tell us about the claims and treatment recommendations associated with GLP and NLA?
In this episode, I'm joined by speech-language pathologist Kathleen Oppenheimer, who has spent considerable time examining these questions through the lens of language science and psycholinguistics.
Kathleen describes how she first encountered GLP and NLA on social media during the pandemic and why some of the claims she encountered immediately raised questions for her as someone trained in linguistics.
We unpack the distinction between language production and language processing, and discuss why observing the words and phrases a child says cannot necessarily tell us how that child is processing language.
We also explore an important nuance in this debate: Many practices commonly associated with NLA are quite reasonable—and in some cases very well aligned with established, evidence-based approaches. Following the child's lead, building strong therapeutic relationships, recognizing echolalia as meaningful communication, and honoring multiple forms of communication are all valuable practices.
But those practices aren't unique to NLA.
Kathleen contrasts NLA recommendations with research-supported approaches such as Enhanced Milieu Teaching, and explains why recommendations involving prompting, single-word models, verbs, and grammatical language input matter for language development.
Along the way, we discuss:
What GLP and NLA actually claim about language development.
Why defining and reliably identifying a "Gestalt Language Processor" is more difficult than social media might suggest.
The difference between what a child says and how researchers determine what a child is actually processing.
What psycholinguistic methods such as the visual world paradigm can tell us about real-time language comprehension.
Why echolalia can be meaningful communication without accepting the larger GLP/NLA framework.
The substantial areas of common ground between NLA proponents and research-aligned language interventions.
Why following a child's lead and honoring their communication does not require adopting NLA stages.
How Enhanced Milieu Teaching differs from NLA-based intervention.
Concerns about recommendations to avoid or delay modeling single words, verbs, and certain grammatical forms.
What we know—and don't know—about the empirical evidence supporting GLP/NLA.
How social media can turn nuanced clinical ideas into much broader claims.
The potential costs of implementing unsupported interventions, even when those interventions appear benign.
How clinicians can have productive conversations with colleagues and families who have embraced GLP/NLA.
Why clear, jargon-free explanations of what we're doing in therapy—and why we're doing it—matter.
One thing I especially appreciated about this conversation is that Kathleen doesn't approach this as a simple choice between being "for" or "against" GLP/NLA. Instead, she encourages us to pull apart the individual claims and practices, retain the components that are supported by evidence, and scrutinize those that aren't.
For clinicians navigating an increasingly complicated landscape of research, social media, and rapidly spreading treatment approaches, I think that's an incredibly useful framework.
Resources discussed in this episode:
Kathleen's Instagram: @language_processing
Kathleen's course: GLP and NLA: Analyzing the Claims and Evidence.
Kathleen's website: Oppenheimer Speech and Language, LLC.
Lorang, et al., (2026). A Response to Blanc and Colleagues' Viewpoint on Gestalt Language Processing and the Natural Language Acquisition Protocol: Concerns and Common Ground.
Hutchins, et al., (2024). Natural Language Acquisition and Gestalt Language Processing: A Critical Analysis of Their Application to Autism and Speech Language Therapy.
Dollaghan, C. (2007). Evidence-based practice in communication disorders.
Bredin-Oja and Fey (2014). Children's Responses to Telegraphic and Grammatically Complete Prompts to Imitate.
Kang, et al., (2025). Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Enhanced Milieu Teaching.
Sponsor shoutouts:
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!
Safety-Care is a crisis prevention and de-escalation training program designed for professionals who support individuals with challenging behavior. More than 300,000 professionals have been trained in Safety-Care's evidence-based approach to recognizing early warning signs and responding with confidence. To learn more, visit QBS.com/podcast.
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. 
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.
The BOP Patreon. Do you want to get the show ad-free and before everyone else? Click here to learn how!

Welcome to Session 336 The Behavioral Observations Podcast.
Well technically, this is actually Session 199, and I wanted to take a minute to explain why you're hearing a rebroadcast.
This conversation with Dr. Jason Travers originally aired back in September of 2022, but I've decided it's worth bringing back because, unfortunately, the issues surrounding Facilitated Communication haven't gone away. In fact, if anything, they've become more relevant.
Over the past several years, we've continued to see heartwarming news stories and viral social media posts featuring non-speaking autistic individuals who appear to be communicating through methods such as Facilitated Communication, the Rapid Prompting Method, or Spelling to Communicate. These stories are understandably compelling. We all want people with significant communication challenges to have access to effective ways to express themselves.
The problem is that hope, by itself, isn't evidence.
Facilitated Communication has been studied extensively for decades, and the scientific record is remarkably consistent. The evidence has repeatedly shown that the messages produced through FC originate with the facilitator, not the individual. Despite that, these practices continue to find new audiences under different names and in different settings.
As behavior analysts—and really, as anyone who cares about helping people with disabilities—we have an obligation to evaluate interventions based on evidence, even when the conclusions are uncomfortable. That's especially true when the potential harms are so significant, not only for the individuals using these methods, but also for their families, educators, and support teams.
I also think this episode serves as a useful foundation because I plan to cover this topic in greater depth over the coming months, along with other interventions that have gained popularity despite lacking scientific support. Rather than assuming everyone has heard this discussion before, I thought it made sense to revisit what I think is one of the clearest introductions to the topic.
So whether you're hearing this conversation for the first time or giving it another listen, I hope you'll pay particular attention to the history of Facilitated Communication, how it was scientifically evaluated, why those findings matter, and how Dr. Travers recommends discussing these issues with colleagues and families in a way that's both accurate and compassionate.
Please note that I edited out the "how did you get into ABA segment," so you can get right to the heart of the topic. I'll include links to the original recording if you want to go back and hear more about Jason's background.
Here are the shownotes from the original broadcast:
If your social media consumption is anything like mine, you've likely seen some feel-good stories in the media as of late that report on non-speaking students - generally students with Autism - who are graduating from college, giving valedictorian speeches, and so forth. 
Unfortunately, what's often underpinning many of these cases is a form of Facilitated Communication, or FC for short. What is FC? Glad you asked!
In today's episode, Dr. Jason Travers, Associate Professor at Temple University, joins me today to answer this very question (follow him on Twitter here). 
We covered the history of Facilitated Communication, the early scientific investigations that discredited this practice, FC's variants like the Rapid Prompting Method and Spelling to Communicate, where the practice of FC stands today, the harms that Facilitated Communication causes both users and caregivers, and how Behavior Analysts should both view and talk about these practices. 
Jason also provides the audience with a treasure trove of additional resources:
Jason's Research Gate and Google Scholar pages.

The original Session 199 broadcast.

Jason's on-demand CEU on Spelling2Communicate (use promo code PODCAST to save at checkout!).

Facilitatedcommunication.org 

ASHA Policy Statements on Facilitated Communication and Rapid Prompting Method.

Facilitated Communication—what harm it can do: Confessions of a former facilitator (Boynton, 2012).

An Examination of the Role of the Facilitator in "Facilitated Communication" (Shane and Kearns, 1994).

Ideomotor Effect explained.

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (note: Amazon Associated link).

Skeptic Magazine (Amazon Associate Link); The Skeptical Inquirer. 

The Reading Wars.

Facilitated Communication: The Clinical and Social Phenomenon (Shane 1994; Amazon Associate Link).

Sponsor shoutouts!
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!
Safety-Care is a crisis prevention and de-escalation training program designed for professionals who support individuals with challenging behavior. More than 300,000 professionals have been trained in Safety-Care's evidence-based approach to recognizing early warning signs and responding with confidence. To learn more, visit QBS.com/podcast.
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. 
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.
The BOP Patreon. Do you want to get the show ad-free and before everyone else? Click here to learn how!

En este episodio, Miguel conversa con Janet sobre la conducta verbal desde una perspectiva práctica y cultural. A lo largo de la conversación, exploran por qué la conducta verbal sigue siendo una de las áreas más importantes —y a veces más incomprendidas— dentro del análisis de conducta y la educación.
Janet comparte su trayectoria como latina, educadora, investigadora y líder en múltiples iniciativas dentro del campo, así como su experiencia trabajando con comunidades bilingües y culturalmente diversas. Juntos discuten conceptos fundamentales de la conducta verbal, diferencias entre el enfoque de Skinner y la lingüística tradicional, y cómo la motivación, la función y el contexto transforman la manera en que entendemos la comunicación.
El episodio también aborda temas esenciales como el acceso a formación en español, los retos de trabajar con herramientas centradas en el inglés y la necesidad de desarrollar prácticas verdaderamente culturalmente responsivas. Además, conversan sobre iniciativas en América Latina, mentoría para nuevos analistas de conducta, investigación aplicada y el futuro de la conducta verbal en comunidades hispanohablantes.
Una conversación profunda, accesible y relevante para analistas de conducta, educadores, terapeutas, estudiantes y familias interesadas en comprender la comunicación desde una perspectiva más funcional, humana y contextualizada.

Verbal Behavior: Culture, Context, and Functional Communication
In this episode, Miguel speaks with Janet about verbal behavior from a practical and cultural perspective. Throughout the conversation, they explore why verbal behavior continues to be one of the most important — and sometimes misunderstood — areas within behavior analysis and education.
Janet shares her journey as a Latina educator, researcher, and leader across multiple initiatives in the field, as well as her experience working with bilingual and culturally diverse communities. Together, they discuss foundational concepts in verbal behavior, differences between Skinner's approach and traditional linguistics, and how motivation, function, and context shape the way we understand communication.
The episode also addresses key topics such as access to verbal behavior training in Spanish, challenges associated with English-centered tools and terminology, and the importance of culturally responsive practices. In addition, they discuss initiatives across Latin America, mentorship for emerging behavior analysts, applied research, and the future of verbal behavior within Spanish-speaking communities.
A thoughtful, accessible, and highly relevant conversation for behavior analysts, educators, therapists, students, and families interested in understanding communication through a more functional, humane, and contextualized lens.

Many behavior analysts have experienced the frustration of teaching a skill successfully in one setting only to discover that it doesn't transfer to the situations where it actually matters. In this episode, I sit down with Kristina Montgomery and Emily Beal Wilkinson of Victory Academy to discuss how Essential for Living (EFL) and event-based teaching can help bridge that gap.
Kristina and Emily share their professional journeys into behavior analysis and describe how discovering Dr. Patrick McGreevy's Essential for Living framework reshaped their approach to supporting learners with limited skill repertoires. Rather than focusing on isolated skill acquisition, EFL prioritizes the development of functional, meaningful skills that improve quality of life and increase independence.
A major focus of our conversation is event-based teaching, an instructional approach that embeds learning opportunities within naturally occurring and highly meaningful activities. From gardening and cooking to operating school cafés and participating in role-playing activities, Kristina and Emily explain how these experiences allow practitioners to teach multiple skills simultaneously while creating natural sources of reinforcement.
We also discuss:
How Kristina and Emily first discovered Essential for Living and why it resonated with their clinical experiences.
Why traditional skill-building approaches sometimes fail to produce meaningful generalization.
The concept of "stacking" activities to address multiple goals through a single event.
Examples of event-based teaching activities including gardening, cooking, cafés, and community-based experiences.
A detailed case study illustrating the transition from VB-MAPP-style programming to contextual, event-based instruction.
How literacy, communication, social, and adaptive skills can be embedded within meaningful activities.
The role of natural reinforcement in improving learner engagement.
Their innovative health and wellness program designed to teach tolerance for medical and dental procedures.
How desensitization training can reduce the need for sedation, restraint, and other restrictive practices.
The collateral benefits these programs create for families and healthcare providers.
Research questions related to contextual instruction, assessment, staff satisfaction, and BCBA training.
Advice for newly certified behavior analysts on professional development and values-based practice.
This episode will be especially valuable for behavior analysts, special educators, and anyone supporting individuals with significant support needs who are looking for practical ways to make instruction more meaningful, functional, and socially significant.
Resources discussed in this episode:
Essential for Living
Dr. Patrick McGreevy (see Pat's previous BOP episodes here!)
Victory Academy
Katy Bowman and the concept of activity stacking
Session 218 with Troy Fry
Event Based Teaching course (save with code BOP20)
Essential for Living course (save with code BOP20)
Sponsor Shoutouts
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 BOP Patreon. Do you want to get the show ad-free and before everyone else? Click here to learn how!
Safety-Care is a crisis prevention and de-escalation training program designed for professionals who support individuals with challenging behavior. More than 300,000 professionals have been trained in Safety-Care's evidence-based approach to recognizing early warning signs and responding with confidence. To learn more, visit QBS.com/podcast.
The Behavioral Toolbox International. Check out our courses for school-based and other behavioral professionals, including our newest one, Motivational Interviewing: Getting Educator Buy-In.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a colleague and leaving a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts.