Lecture 5 - establishing new behaviour

Question 1

Can behaviour analysis explain & establish complex human behaviour?

Answer 1

Yes but our behaviour is maintained by delayed contingencies
We behave under ambiguous antecedents
We may engage in the same behaviour over & over again
Complexity is a cardinal feature of behaviour
Cardinal: Rare, but strongly deterministic of behavior

Question 2

What 4 factors make behaviour complex?

Answer 2

Ambiguous antecedents - Behaviour still occurs when antecedents are ambiguous; e.g., Traffic lights system is broken - Ppl still make way for other cars
Behave according to context
Sequencing behaviors - number or combination of behavioral incidents which are geared towards a specific purpose or outcome
Variability in responding e.g., Teaching an adolescent about social rules - which does or doesn’t work in different social groups

Question 3

What is shaping?

Answer 3

Shaping is used to develop a behaviour that a person does not currently exhibit
Shaping exists in everyday life; e.g., Parents reinforce babies babbles and eventually help them to say actual words from the babbles they express - successive approximations increase

Question 4

What are successive approximations?

Answer 4

a method of SHAPING operant behaviour by reinforcing responses similar to the desired behaviour - target terminate goal (start somewhere and make incremental improvements from this)
E.g., Teaching a pupil to write an E

Question 5

What is topography? (dimension of targeted behaviour)

Answer 5

Form of behaviour e.g., Saying a sentence fully

Question 6

What is frequency ? (dimension of targeted behaviour)

Answer 6

Number of responses per unit time e.g., Number of words typed on the computer in a minute

Question 7

What is latency? (dimension of targeted behaviour)

Answer 7

Time between onset of the antecedent stimulus & the occurrence of the behaviour e.g., Increasing the amount of time between onset of aggressive remark and retaliation by a student

Question 8

What is duration? (dimension of targeted behaviour)

Answer 8

Total elapsed time for occurrence of the behaviour e.g., Decreasing the amount of time it takes for a child to clean up their room

Question 9

What did Ghaemmaghami et al., (2018) find about shaping complex functional communication responses?

Answer 9

Aim: Help 4 children use communication responses instead of aggression
Found they were triggered when someone was expecting something of them
Wanted to change dynamic - can they get the children to ask the ppl around them to back away from them
As steps increased, dialogue difficulty increased
Each time that step was changed behaviour improved
Behaviours prior to the last step went to extinction which demonstrates how behaviour improved

Question 10

What did Sivaraman et al., (2021) find about children’s tolerance to face masks

Answer 10

Study looking at improving childrens duration of mask wearing
Shaping: By increasing duration of mask wearing by small increments
Steps 8-12: shaping procedure
Steps 3-7: these aren’t being put on distinction they are elements of a sequence (this is called CHAINING)

Question 11

What is chaining?

Answer 11

Sequence or series of individual responses gets combined to form a chain E.g., Brushing your teeth, parking your car
Each step in the chain tells us the next step
Serves as discriminatory stimuli for the next step

Question 12

What are behaviour chains?

Answer 12

Each step in the chain depends on the previous step having occurred correctly - servers as discriminative stimuli (SD)
E.g., Toothbrush on counter (SD1) -> Pick up toothbrush (R1)

Question 13

What is task analysis?

Answer 13

The breakdown of a complex task into component tasks to identify the different skills needed to correctly complete the task

Question 14

What is forward chaining? (Training using chaining)

Answer 14

The 1st step in the chain is the 1st training step, & then the 2nd, 3rd
& so on, until the entire chain had been taught
E.g., You train the first step until you reach mastery, for example if you teach a child to brush their teeth - 1st step would be teaching the child to pick up their toothbrush independently

Question 15

What is backward chaining? (Training using chaining)

Answer 15

The last step in the chain is the 1st training step, then the 2nd, 3rd, and last so on, until the entire chain has been taught
Prompting starts at the last step & until each step is performed independently the rest of the chain is prompted

Question 16

What type of chaining should you use? (depends upon points)

Answer 16

The type of chaining depends on at the individuals needs are , the type of training, feasibility of either forward or backward training
E.g., Of successful backward training - training adults w/ intellectual disabilities in cooking skills such as making a sandwich
Making a sandwich reinforces behaviour - you get to eat a sandwich

Question 17

How is chaining applied? (Montero & Quintero)

Answer 17

Tried to teach weightlifters the clean and snatch move
Compared forward vs backward training
Set up task analysis
Each individual phase had individual steps within that task analysis
Set up of where to place specific body parts
Made a similar exercise for the clean and snatch response
Each ppt was assigned mastered training (end goal of behaviour)

Question 18

What is generalisation?

Answer 18

The occurrence of relevant behaviour under different, non-training conditions i.e. across subjects, settings, people, behaviors, and/or time ) without the scheduling of the same events in those conditions (Stokes & Baer)

Question 19

What is stimulus generalization?

Answer 19

Target behaviour emitted in the presence of similar but non-identical stimuli
Ex. Finding items you would normally shop for in a different part of the world - you would be able to find the items but it would be more effort
Behaviour that occurs in different context

Question 20

What is stimulus generalization setting?

Answer 20

Target behaviour emitted in a setting that is different
Same behaviour w/ same stimuli but different setting that the training setting

Question 21

What is response generalisation? (Generalisation type)

Answer 21

Untrained responses that are functionally equivalent to the target behaviour
If we engage in a behaviour that is tophigraphically dissimilar to the target behaviour it still meets the same purpose - e.g., saying hi in different languages

Question 22

What is response maintenance? (type of generalisation)

Answer 22

The learner continues to perform the target behaviour AFTER the intervention (or a portion of it) has been terminated
How long maintenance is needed depends on the behaviour
E.g., When learning a language but not having anyone around you that speaks that language - behaviour is not being reinforced and therefore decreases

Question 23

What are guidelines for generalization?

Answer 23

1. Train & hope
2. Sequential modification
3. Introduce to natural maintaining contingencies
4. Train sufficient exemplars
5. Train loosely
6. Use indiscriminable contingencies
7. Program common stimuli

Question 24

What did Reeve find about establishing generalized repertoire of helping behaviour in children with special needs part 1

Answer 24

Researchers attempted to establish a generalised repertoire of helping behaviour in children w/ special needs
Picked diverse facial expressions
Looked at different circumstances that were typically around when someone would indicate that they need help
Ideally when they would teach the children all the SDs they’d use a combination of these to demonstrate that these are signals that someone needs help

Question 25

What did Reeve find about establishing generalized repertoire of helping behaviour in children with special needs part 2

Answer 25

It’s an abstract thing to teach children to help someone who needs help
These scenarios need to happen in the real world otherwise the child may not offer help if it doesn’t occur in the real world
By creating several activities in a classroom setting
The results showed that all 4 children learned to emit appropriate helping responses in the presence of discriminative stimuli from the helping categories used during training

Question 26

Lecture Summary

Answer 26

Behaviour analytic procedures can be used to establish complex human behaviour
Shaping, chaining & programming for generalization are some examples of these procedures