Been doing some "extra" clinical supervision (ABA) in the past few weeks. My favorite part of supervising is how it (a) challenges me to actually know what I'm talking about and (b) inspires me to seek out the answers when I, in fact, am not really sure what I'm talking about. That leads into the "Friday Thread" nature of this post. I try not to schedule direct client stuff on Fridays and use it for report writing/admin catch-up, etc. (all stuff that I can do during other evenings/early mornings during the week, thus giving me more free time on Fridays). Some issues came up in a recent session that I wanted some clarification on (actually proof that I remembered stuff correctly and wasn't just talking out my butt to appear smart to a supervisee).oday, I used the first hour to research these topics (for those of you playing along at home- effects of intertrial intervals on skill acquisition; stimulus blocking/overshadowing). It really is amazing to me that in the first hour of the day, from my office (though it could be from anywhere with an internet connection), I can find, download, print out, and briefly review 10+ research articles. I know- this sounds like and "old man" post about how "we had it rough in my day", but finding and printing out 10+ articles when I was in graduate school (in this century, albeit the early years) would have taken me an entire afternoon and required a drive to at least one, and maybe even two, libraries, as well as cost me about 10 buck in copy fees (more when you factor in that I probably would have forgotten my copy card in the machine with several dollars worth of copies still left on it). I can also now share the articles with the supervisee who will be by the office later, thus potentially making her better informed/equipped, and- most importantly- increasing the likelihood that the client will make progress in upcoming sessions. This is probably every day, boring stuff for a lot of you, and it is pretty much that for me. But it's still pretty cool when you think about it.
Oh- and I confirmed that I wasn't talking out my butt either, though what identified in this case as "stimulus blocking" is probably better conceptualized as "stimulus overshadowing".