Reinforcement issues relating to Behavior Modification.

1. Behavior Modification Reinforcement Issues Spring 2010

3. Positive reinforcement

4. Contingently ADDING a stimulus following a behavior to strengthen or maintain a behavior.

5. Negative reinforcement

6. Contingently REMOVING a stimulus following a behavior to strengthen or maintain a behavior

7. These are consequences of operant behavior.

9. Start general (being successful)

10. Get more specific (being to work on time)

11. Choosing a reinforcer

12. Different reinforcers work differently for different people

13. Consumable; activity; manipulative (play with a fav toy, etc); possessional and social.

14. Satiation and deprivation (motivating operations)

15. Temporarily alter the effectiveness of a reinforcer.

16. Establishing operation (increases effectiveness) - deprivation

18. Size is important – usually, but not always, as you increase the size of the reinforcer it maintains more behavior

19. $$$$$$$$$

20. Must watch out for satiation!

21. Using rules

22. Instructions are good to use with humans, but not necessary

23. They speed up the learning process

25. Conditioned Reinforcers Unconditioned reinforcers – primary Food, water, sex, warm Conditioned reinforcers By pairing neutral stimuli with primary reinforcers you can develop conditioned or secondary reinforcers Clickers, photos, money You present the conditioned Sr and then later, on occasion present the backup Sr (the primary or even secondary reinforcer) Tokens Token economies work on this principle – you earn tokens and exchange them for other reinforcers. Immediacy.

26. Conditioned Reinforcement, Cont. Make sure the backup reinforcer is actually a reinforcer Food is not a reinforcer to a satiated organism Use many backup reinforcers Generalized conditioned reinforcer – connects to MANY backup reinforcers Intermittent reinforcement is still the best (in terms of the backup Sr) Don’t let the conditioned Sr extinguish.

27. Problems Consistency – make sure that the conditioned Sr actually leads to a backup Sr. Punishment has the same issue. The extinction problem – make sure that you use effective backup Sr.

28. Intermittent reinforcement Schedules of reinforcement A rule of how frequently a behavior will be reinforced, if at all. The ones that maintain the highest rates are intermittent reinforcement. Ratio schedules Dependent on the number of behaviors performed Interval schedules Dependent on ONE behavior after a given amount of time. Limited hold After an interval – a response will produce a reinforcer only for a given window of time. Duration Schedules Used with continuous behavior Must be performed for a given length of time to receive the reinforcer