ABSC NOTES 4 Reinforcement Procedure used to maintain behavior Reinforcer the consequence of your behavior that maintains the behavior BEHAVIORS not people are reinforced Rewards are not necessarily the same as reinforcers sometimes rewards do not affect behavior Since we don t know whether this changes behavior we call this an UNKNOWN Our Technical Definition Reinforcers are stimuli that follow behavior and increases the future probability of that behavior HOW WAS REINFORCEMENT DISCOVERED E L Thorndike 1898 first scientist to establish that consequences can increase the probability of behavior B F Skinner 1938 studies operant behavior in more species under intermittent reinforcement CONTINGENCY an IF THEN relation between behavior and consequence IF the behavior occurs THEN the reinforcer will be delivered LESSON QUIZ 7 8 Will s teacher observed in the baseline phase that Will spent about 10 of his free play time playing with blocks When his teacher made a point of complimenting Will s creations made with the blocks Will spent 45 of his free time playing with blocks When the teacher left town to join the circus Will continued to spend 45 of his free time playing with the blocks With this EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN we can classify the compliments as a n UNKNOWN We used to buy Old Roy brand dog chow but this gave our dog pretty bad gas Now we buy Purina dog chow and the dog doesn t leave green clouds wherever he goes Buying Purina dog chow appears to have been REINFORCED use the past tense of the word you are thinking of entering The reinforcer that maintains the behavior of working is MONEY John had a rock in his shoe He stopped took his shoe off and tipped out the rock In the future if John has a rock in his shoe again he is very likely to do the same thing The process described here is REINFORCEMENT Mike sold clothes on Amazon once He got a good amount of money from it but hasn t sold anything else of his on Amazon In Mike s case the clothes functioned as a n UNKNOWN Instructions PRECEDE behavior therefore they are not reinforcers If an antecedent occurs and the target behavior happens following the behavior we call the antecedent an UNKNOWN Reliability is the AGREEMENT of a particular behavior between two independent observers Because humans are SOCIAL animals ATTENTION functions as a powerful reinforcer for most of us A behavioral procedure that is unsuccessful in changing behavior is referred to as UNKNOWN If a stimuli is delivered before a request is made and the subject follows the request we can concluded that the stimuli functioned as an UNKNOWN LESSON 9 QUIZ When mom said to stop throwing rocks in the neighbors pool we all stopped Mom used what behavioral procedure to produce this rapid decline in our behavior UNKNOWN Janine decided to buy a new GPS for her car She would use it every time she drove but she noticed that it took her through obscure routes that would make her feel uncomfortable Eventually Jeanine decides to return the new GPS and just use her old GPS What procedure accounts for Janine returning the new GPS EXTINCTION Richard s dad always reminds him to brush his teeth before bed He thought that after a daily reminder for 4 years that Richard could handle this himself and wanted to see if Richard would do it on his own He didn t When Richard s dad doesn t remind him Richard doesn t brush his teeth before bed This is an example of UNKNOWN Last weekend Samantha s hair dryer stopped working She used to dry her hair with it every day before going to school Once it stopped working she tried a couple of times to get it to work by hitting it on the counter but then she gave up and threw it away The procedure described here is called EXTINCTION Derek used to wear Carmex on his lips until he heard on the news that wearing Carmex in the sun causes your lips to sunburn so he stopped This procedure is called UNKNOWN Erin disliked it when her customers shook their glasses in her face to get her attention for more to drink When Warren shoved his glass in her face one day as he had done in the past she completely ignored him Warren never shoved his glass in Erin s face again What procedure provides an explanation for this decline in Warren s behavior EXTINCTION Delivery of reinforcers must be STOPPED during extinction During extinction a behavior analyst must ensure that a reinforcer will NOT be DELIVERED after problem behavior occurs A predictable effect of extinction is called RESURGENCE It is when the behaviors that have been reinforced previously begin occurring again rather than the behavior undergoing the extinction According to the partial reinforcement effect PRE behavior that has been reinforced OFTEN in the past will undergo extinction quickly Colleen used to scream dirty words out in her English 101 class The instructor would get very embarrassed and would talk with Colleen about it after class Around the 4th week of the semester the instructor started ignoring these outbursts Colleen gradually screamed out less and less The instructor had unknowingly used a n EXTINCTION procedure A baby cries in its crib before going to bed The parents ignore the crying in attempt to stop the baby from crying to fall asleep The baby continues to cry at an even louder rate causing the parents to come into the room and check on her The condition under which maintains the babies crying is UNKNOWN Johnny went to the gym and was so amazed by how many different machines there were to use After using 5 machines Johnny was exhausted and went home The next day Johnny came back and used the machines he didn t use before What process can be invoked to explain this increase in the frequency of Johnny going to the gym REINFORCEMENT The PARTIAL REINFORCEMENT EFFECT PRE states that the more intermittently the behavior has been reinforced in the past the longer it will take for extinction to work or the more often behavior has been reinforced in the past the faster it will undergo extinction in the future A rabbit went to his favorite feeding spot a farmer s garden He had been to it many times before and always found plentiful of food to steal This time no food was available The next day the rabbit did not return to his favorite feeding spot a dramatic change in his behavior What process explains this EXTINCTION