Chapter 9 Changing the Control of a Behavior with Fading 1 Define fading and give an example of it Fading is the gradual change over successive trials of an antecedent stimulus that controls a response so that the response eventually occurs to a partially changed or completely new stimulus Peter would at first say his name only when it was said to him Through a fading process the stimulus control over the response Peter was gradually transferred from the antecedent stimulus Peter to the antecedent stimulus What s your name One might ask whether Peter knew that he was saying his own name To phrase this questions more behaviorally would Peter have consistently responded correctly when asked other questions involving his name For example would he have consistently answered Peter when shown his reflection in the mirror and asked Who s that Probably not However teaching him to respond appropriately to What s your name was an important start to teaching him to answer other questions involving his name and to his knowing that he was saying his name 2 Define errorless discrimination training Errorless discrimination training sometimes referred to as errorless learning is the use of a fading procedure to establish a stimulus discrimination so that no errors occur 3 Why is establishing a stimulus discrimination without errors advantageous Errorless transfer of a discrimination can occur and it has at least three advantages over procedures involving trial and error First errors consume valuable time Second if an error occurs once it tends to occur many times even though it is being extinguished Third the nonreinforcement that occurs when errors are being extinguished often produces emotional side effects such as tantrums aggressive behavior and attempts to escape from the situation 4 What is meant by a dimension of a stimulus Describe an example In general a dimension of a stimulus is any characteristic that can be measured on some continuum As illustrated by the preceding examples fading occurs along dimensions of stimuli such as the loudness of the question that Veronica presented to Peter the pressure of a teacher s hand that guides a child s printing and the clarity of dots that a child might be expected to trace 5 Identify three stimulus dimensions along which fading occurred in the examples cited in the first two sections of this chapter Look at 4 6 Describe an example from this chapter in which the training situation remained constant but a specific stimulus dimension was faded To teach a child to trace a circle the teacher might begin with a large number of sheets with a heavily dotted circle on each of them The teacher places a pencil in the child s hand says Trace the circle and then guides the child s hand so that the pencil traces the circle by connecting the dots Immediately after this the child receives a reinforcer 7 8 9 10 After several trials the teacher fades out the pressure of her hand as a cue controlling the child s tracing by 1 Lightly holding the child s hand for several trials 2 Touching her fingertips to the back of the child s hand for several trials 3 Pointing to the item to be traced 4 Finally simply giving the instruction Trace the circle Steps 1 2 and 3 are always accompanied by this instruction Describe an example from this chapter in which the general training situation was faded Once the teacher has taught the child to trace the child can be taught to draw or copy by the teacher s fading out the dotted cues that guide the tracing For example the teacher might use a sheet on which there are several dotted circles The circles progress from a heavily dotted circle on the left to a circle with very few dots on the right The teacher points to the most heavily dotted circle and instructs the child Trace the circle here The desired response is reinforced and the procedure is repeated with the more lightly dotted circles On subsequent steps the dots can be faded out completely so that the child will draw a circle in their absence It is then a simple matter to fade in the instruction Draw a circle to this newly acquired response The instruction Copy a circle said while the teacher points to a circle can also be faded in and come to control the response Learning to copy many different shapes in this fashion will eventually enable the child to copy shapes not previously copied Describe how use might use fading to teach your pet to perform a trick First I would tell my dog to shake while holding his paw and shaking it at the same time I would then reinforce this with a dog treat Second I would tell my dog to shake and touch his paw I would then reinforce this with a dog treat Third I would tell my dog to shake and hold out my hand I would then reinforce this with a dog treat Assume that you have an 18 month old child who imitates the word chip Describe in detail how you might use fading to teach your child to correctly identify a chip i e a potato chip when you point to it and ask What s that In a very soft whisper I would ask What s that Then very loudly and quickly before my child would be able to answer I d shout Chip Of course my child would mimic the word Chip and I d reinforce this with Good boy and a chip You may wonder how this could represent any progress because my child was still only mimicking However over several trials I began asking the question What s this more loudly and supplying the answer Chip more quietly On each trial I d continue to reinforce the correct response Chip Eventually I d ask loudly What s this and simply mouth the word Chip Nevertheless my child would respond with the correct answer Chip Over several trials I d cease mouthing the correct answer but my child would still respond correctly to the question What s this What do we mean by final desired stimulus Give an example 11 12 13 14 15 The final desired stimulus is important to be selected so that the occurrence of the response to that particular stimulus is likely to be maintained in the natural environment In Peter s case it would have been easy for Veronica to stop training at the second to last step at which Veronica asked loudly What s your name and then mouthed the word Peter However when others approached Peter in his natural environment and asked What s your name they would not likely mouth Peter Therefore Veronica conducted the last step of the program in which Peter responded correctly to the question What s your name completely on his own What do we mean by starting