Part G- Behaviour-Change Procedures-Part 1
In the next posts (G- Part 1 & Part 2), I will be adding links to previous posts so that you can look back and remember in-depth information about the topic, as well as some of the examples that I’ve previously shared. I’ll also be adding in scenarios to demonstrate how I would use these concepts in my everyday life/work (all scenarios are fictional and are not related to any of my current or previous clients).
G-1: Use Positive and Negative Reinforcement Procedures to Strengthen Behaviour
Review(See B-4):
Reinforcement: A functional relation where a response is followed by a reinforcer, resulting in an increase in the frequency of the response.
Positive Reinforcement: A response followed immediately by the presentation of a stimulus, resulting in similar responses occurring more frequently in the future.
Negative Reinforcement: A response followed immediately by the removal of a stimulus, resulting in similar responses occurring more frequently in the future.
Now that we have reviewed the types of reinforcement, let’s discuss how to use reinforcement to change behaviours.
Quality of Reinforcement
High rate of low quality reinforcers will decrease behaviour, but low rate of high quality reinforcers will increase behaviour
Magnitude of reinforcement is important (i.e. how long the person has with the reinforcer (duration), how many pieces of the reinforcers is provider (reinforcer rate), and how much of the reinforcer is provided (intensity))
Clinicians should use direct reinforcement contingencies (i.e. no intervening steps/behaviour prior to reinforcement)
At first, use CRF as the schedule for reinforcement, then increase response requirement to access reinforcement, then increase to a variable rate of reinforcement- a behaviour reinforced through intermittent reinforcement is the hardest to put on extinction
Use descriptive praise and other attention based reinforcers that would be similar to natural environments
Scenario 1: You are supporting a 22-year old man, Adam, who lives in a Supported Living setting. Adam loves to take care of plants and he also enjoys going for walks in the neighbourhood, with staff. Staff have shared that Adam has challenges in putting on a winter jacket. You come up with a great idea to teach Adam how to put on a jacket and the reinforcer you use is going for a walk in the neighbourhood. Every time Adam practices putting on his jacket (based on the step in your intervention), he can go for a walk. If he independently puts on his jacket, Adam gets to go for a 20 minute walk and staff will also provide descriptive praise by saying, “great job putting on your jacket!” If he requires additional supports, he can get a cookie or go for a 5 minute walk and staff will say, “nice try.” After 3 weeks, Adam can put his jacket on independently!
Scenario 2: You are walking in Downtown Toronto during the summer (also known as construction season). A construction worker is using a jack hammer and it’s very loud. You take our your headphones and put them on to cover your ears and listen to your favourite song. In the future, whenever you are walking by a construction site, you put on your headphones and listen to great music.
G-2: Use Interventions Based on Motivating Operations and Discriminative Stimuli
Review(See B-2 & 12):
Motivating Operations: A behaviour occurs in the presence of a limited number of stimuli. For example, hunger is a motivating operation.
Value altering effect: Alters effectiveness (increases or decreases) of a stimulus, which means that the MO change for how badly someone wants something. For example, food.
Behaviour altering effect: Alters current frequency (evoke or abate) of a behaviour, which means that the MO changes for how likely someone is to do something. For examples, going out of their way to get a specific type of food.
Establishing Operations (EO): Alters effectiveness and frequency of the presented reinforcer
Abolishing Operations (AO): Decreases effectiveness and frequency of presented reinforcer
Unconditioned Motivating Operations (UMOs): No learning is required with a stimulus for it to have a reinforcing effect.
Conditioned Motivating Operations (CMOs):
Surrogate (CMO-S): A neutral stimulus has the same value altering and behaviour altering effect as the MO it is paired with and the effects can be altered by pairing and unpairing
Reflexive (CMO-R): A neutral stimulus alters a relation to itself and establishes its own result as reinforcement and evokes all behaviour that has accomplished that result
Transitive (CMO-T): An event where one stimulus makes it necessary to complete the response and a second stimulus becomes it’s reinforcer
Discriminative Stimulus: A stimulus that controls a type of behaviour due to differential availability; The antecedent event that occurs before the target response can have control over a response class, due to previous consequences
Differential Availability: the reinforcer/consequence is available in the presence of the stimulus and unavailable during the absence of the stimulus
Scenario 1: You are teaching a child with ASD to tact everyday objects. You ask the child, “what is it,” prior to holding up one of the objects. The child responds with the name of the object. The discriminative stimulus is “What is it?”
Scenario 2: You constantly forget your keys so using your ABA knowledge, you decide to leave your keys by your front door. Your keys by the front door is a CMO-T (i.e. you need your keys to lock the door).
G-3: Establish and Use Conditioned Reinforcers
Review(See B-8):
Conditioned Reinforcer: A learned reinforcer; a stimuli that functions as reinforcement (increases future occurrence of behaviour) due to learned history.
To establish a conditioned reinforcer, clinicians use stimulus-stimulus pairing (i.e. pair a neutral stimulus with a reinforcing stimulus) or the Premack Principle.
Premack Principle (Grandma’s Law): Engaging in behaviours that occur at low frequency, followed by behaviours that occur at high frequency will function as reinforcement for the behaviours that occur at lower frequencies.
The Premack principle is one of my most used strategies (personally and professionally). This strategy uses first-then to increase your (or your clients) likelihood to engage in the less preferred activity. Thus, creating a conditioned reinforcer.
Scenario 1: You are working with a young child with ASD, you find that the child only likes chocolate chip cookies. To provide more access to reinforcers, you pair the chocolate chip cookies with praise. You slowly and systematically fade the cookie till the praise serves as a reinforcer.
Scenario 2: You dislike eating broccoli but you know it’s good for you so you want to eat it. You love having carrots, cucumber, and tomatoes. You decide that you have to eat brocolli to access carrots, cucumber, and tomatoes. First brocolli, then other vegetables.
G-4: Use Stimulus and Response Prompts and Fading (e.g., errorless, most-to-least, least-to-most, prompt delay, stimulus fading)
Prompts: Antecedent conditions used to support learners in emitting a correct response, in the presence of an SD that will control that behaviour. There are two classes of prompts, stimulus prompts and response prompts
Stimulus Prompts: These are movement cues, position cues, and redundancy. Movement cues are tapping, touching, and looking. Position cues are the position of the item. Redundancy is when one or more dimension of the stimulus is paired with the correct response. How I think of identify if a prompt is a stimulus prompt is by thinking of if the stimulus is changing in a way to provide the prompt.
Example: An instructor therapist is working on receptive identification of everyday objects. She is teaching a child how to Rec ID a new object (pencil). She puts out an array of 3 objects, a pencil, a phone, and a crayon. The instructor therapist puts the pencil closer to the child than the phone and crayon, which is a position stimulus prompt.
Response Prompts: These are verbal directions, modelling, and physical guidance. Verbal directions are saying out loud what the individual should do. Modelling is when you demonstrate how to do the skill, however this can only be used if the learner has imitation skills. Physical guidance is moving someone’s body (gently) to complete the skills (think of hand-over-hand).
Example: An instructor therapist is working on Picture exchange communication system with a learner. To complete PECS Phase 1, you need a back prompter to support the learner in understanding the contingency between exchanging the PEC and receiving the corresponding item. Initially, a physical guidance response prompt is used to teach the learner the contingency.
Prompt Fading
There are various types of prompt fading that are used in ABA.
Errorless Teaching: Clinicians immediately provide a prompt (can use any of the prompts below) to ensure the learner is not engaging in incorrect responding.
Most-to-Least Prompts: Clinicians go in with the most intrusive prompt, then reduce to less intrusive prompts till the individual can engage in the skill independently
Least-to-Most Prompts: Clinicians wait for 5-10 seconds, before going in with the least intrusive prompt. If the learner does not have success with the less intrusive prompt, the clinician will continue to increase the prompt level until the learner has success.
Prompt Delay/Time Delay: Clinicians prompt after a predetermined time and continue to increase the prompt after predetermined times, dependent on the learner’s success with the skill.
Stimulus Fading: Clinicians gradually decrease a physical dimension of the prompt once the learner has success with the skill.
G-5: Use Modeling and Imitation Training
Imitation: Copying someone’s movements or verbal behaviour
Prerequisities for imitation:
Attending to the clinician
Staying seated
“Calm hands”
Looking at objects
Tracking objects in various locations
Modeling: Any movement can be a model for imitation. There are two types of models:
1) Planned Models: Preplanned actions that can support a learner in acquiring new skills or shape skill repertoires by imitation
2) Unplanned Models: Any unplanned action that an individual can imitate and engage in at a later time
G-6: Use Instructions and Rules
Rule: A verbal description of a behaviour contingency that can withstand long delayed consequences.
Instructional Control: Being the person who a child will listen to, whether it’s demands or to play together
G-7: Use Shaping
Shaping: Reinforcing approximations till the final behaviour is achieved, in a systematic manner. Shaping can be conducted in terms of frequency, latency, duration, and amplitude/magnitude and across various response topographies. Shaping can be time consuming and requires constant monitoring of the behaviour. Clinicians may also find that progress can be varied, misapplied, and harmful behaviour may be shaped.
Example: Teaching a child to correctly say a word. The clinician would provide reinforcement for each attempt and the close the attempt the actual word, the more reinforcement would be provided.
To use Shaping:
Select final/terminal behaviour
Determine mastery criteria
Analyze response class to identify proper sequence of approximations
Identify first behaviour to reinforce
Gradually proceed to successive approximations
G-8: Use Chaining
Chaining: Sequence of differing responses that are corresponding with a particular condition. The first response serves as a discriminative stimulus to begin the chain, the following responses serve as a conditioned reinforcer for the previous response and a SD for the next response, and the last response only serves as a conditioned reinforcer for completing the chain
Example: Teaching a child to wear a jacket. The clinician would provide reinforcement for each step of wearing a jacket (e.g., picking up the jacket, putting right arm in, putting left arm in, zipping up).
Task Analysis: This is when a clinician breaks down a complex skill, into smaller, teachable units.
Types of Chaining
Forward Chaining: Behaviours in the task analysis are taught in sequential order and reinforcement is delivered contingent upon predetermined criteria being met.
Example: With reference to the task analysis of hand washing above, forward chaining would be used as follows. Initially, the clinician would provide reinforcement after step 1, turning on tap and provide prompts for the entirety of the chain. Once step 1 is mastered, the clinician would provide reinforcement after step 2 and so on until the entire chain is mastered.
Backward Chaining: Behaviours in the task analysis are taught from the final step and reinforcement is delivered contingent upon predetermined criteria being met.
Example: With reference to the task analysis of hand washing above, backward chaining would be used as follows. Initially, the clinician would provide prompts for the entirety of the chain and provide reinforcement only after step 6. Once step 6 is mastered, the clinician would provide reinforcement after step 5 and so on until the entire chain is mastered.
Total-Task Chaining: Also known as whole-task presentation and total-task presentation. Behaviours in the task analysis are taught and prompted in sequential order and reinforcement is delivered contingent upon completion of the entire chain.
Example: With reference to the task analysis of hand washing above, total-task chaining would be used as follows. The clinician would provide reinforcement after the entire chain is completed.
G-9: Use Discrete-Trial, Free-Operant, and Naturalistic Teaching Arrangements
Discrete Trial Teaching: A discriminative stimulus is presented to elicit a response.
Free-Operant Teaching: Repeated responding, without an SD present.
Naturalistic Teaching (NET): Using the natural environment to teach various skills.
In today’s ABA, naturalistic teaching is seen as the best form due to it’s nature of being generalizable. You don’t need fancy items or materials because you use the items in the learners general environment.
G-10: Teach Simple and Conditional Discriminations
Simple Discrimination: An individual can only respond to one discriminative stimulus.
Example: When someone asks, “how are you?” The individual can respond only with, “I’m good”
Conditional Discrimination: An individual can respond to two or more discriminative stimuli.
Example: When someone asks, “how are you?” The individual can respond with, “I’m good” or “I’m well” or “I’m fine”
G-11: Use Skinner’s Analysis to Teach Verbal Behaviour
Review(See B-14) for a review on verbal operants.
Skinner’s Analysis is that verbal behaviour is defined by the function of the response, rather than the form and the response is reinforced through the mediation of another person.
The speaker gains access to reinforcement, the listener (audience) provides reinforcement and is the SD for the behaviour.
