The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

What is Motivational Interviewing? Session 236 with Callie Plattner

Aug 22, 2023

Callie Plattner, Vice President of Clinical Operations at Mosaic Pediatric Therapy, discusses Motivational Interviewing, its 4 micro-skills, research on MI's effectiveness, and its potential impact on rapport building, staff and parent adherence, and therapy attendance. She highlights applications in physical therapy and diabetes management, and promising results of MI training during COVID-19. The feasibility and acceptability of MI for BCBAs is also discussed, including improvements in communication skills and parent-clinician relationship.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Motivational Interviewing and Sponsor Introductions

02:15 • 2min

Motivational Interviewing and Background in ABA

04:18 • 3min

Introduction, Personal Journey, and Advertisement for the Michigan Autism Conference

07:44 • 3min

Motivational Interviewing: Building Therapeutic Alliances

10:37 • 4min

Borrowing from Other Disciplines to Improve Rapport Building in Behavior Analysis

14:56 • 2min

Exploring the Training, Research, and Potential Impact of Motivational Interviewing

16:52 • 3min

Research on Motivational Interviewing and Recommended Resources

20:03 • 4min

Applications of Motivational Interviewing in Physical Therapy and Diabetes Management

23:45 • 16min

Promising Results and Future Prospects of Motivational Interviewing Training

39:57 • 3min

Feasibility and Acceptability of Motivational Interviewing for BCBAs

43:04 • 16min

Dr. Callie Plattner joins me in Session 236 to talk about her work in the area of Motivational Interviewing. Callie is the Vice President of Clinical Operations at Mosaic Pediatric Therapy, and happens to be a fellow Auburn grad (War Eagle!).

Now longtime listeners will know that we've covered MI on the podcast before. Back in Session 158, my friend Dr. Jim Murphy, who incidentally also happens to be an Auburn grad, discussed MI in the context of helping young adults reduce binge drinking and other substance-related problems.

Also, my good friend and colleague, Dr. Paulie Gavoni, has been talking about MI for years. In fact, he's in the process of developing a course on this topic for the project that Paulie and I, along with our colleague Anika Costa, have been working on called The Behavioral Toolbox (brace yourselves for hearing a lot more about this coming up ;-).

This background aside, in this episode, Callie gives an overview of what exactly Motivational Interviewing is, and defines the four "micro-skills" of asking Open-Ended questions, providing Affirmations, Reflecting, and Summarizing... the so-called "OARS" skills.

Callie then discusses the research she's conducted with Dr. Cynthia Anderson, which will be coming out soon in Behavior Analysis in Practice, and more generally talks about how MI can be an effective tool to build rapport with stakeholders and possibly improve things like staff and parent adherence to behavior plans, therapy attendance, and so on.

Links from this episode:

A brief history of ABA with Jim Johnston.
Mosaic Pediatric Therapy.
The Behavioral Toolbox.
A Behavior-Analytic Account of Motivational Interviewing (Christopher and Dougher, 2009).
Not discussed in this episode, but still relevant, and worth checking out: Taking a Motivational Interviewing Approach to Prevention Science: Progress and Extensions (Shaw and Wilson, 2021).
If you get anything from these shownotes, watch these videos: The Ineffective Physician and the Effective Physician (huge shout out to Dr. Carolynn Kohn for sharing these with me!).
The Helpful Response Questionnaire.

This podcast is brought to you by:

The Michigan Autism Conference, which is taking place on October 11-13 in Kalamazoo, and online as well. We’ll hear more about this event later on in the show, but if you’re impatient like me, to go michiganautismconference.org, and use the code MAC10 to save $10 at checkout.

The Stone Soup Conference, which is taking place on October 20th. Use code PODCAST to save on your registration as well.

The University of Cincinnati Online. UC Online designed a Master of Education in Behavior Analysis program that is 100% online and asynchronous, meaning you log on when it works for you. Want to learn more? Go to online.uc.edu and click the “request info” button.

Behavior University. 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.