1. How do antecedent interventions affect behaviour?
2. How can discriminative stimuli, motivating operations, and response effort be manipulated to increase desirable behaviour or decrease undesirable behaviour?
3. Compare and contrast discriminative stimuli and motivating operations.
4. What is noncontingent reinforcement, how does it affect behaviour, and what are its pros and cons?
How can antecedents be used to increase child ______-____ use in shopping carts?
(Barker et al., 2004)
- observed baseline use of child ______ _____ in shopping carts
- research assistant posed as a greeter at a supermarket
• opened cart’s seat
• unbuckled belt
• gave cart to the shopper
- baseline: less than 40% of parents used safety belts
- behavioural treatment program:
• parents took cart and placed child in seat
• greeter waited 2-3 seconds, and then prompted them with “Have a nice day, and don’t forget to ______ __.”
- results: prompts increased __________
- definition: antecedent stimuli are manipulated to evoke desirable behaviours than can be (______________) reinforced
- also called antecedent control procedures or antecedent _____________
1. presenting, modifying, or developing ___ SD for desirable behaviour
- can be speeded up by using ________ methods, like prompting
Mathews and Dix (1992):
- looked at syndicated _____ ______ depicting passengers and cars
- recorded baseline data on seat-belt use: 15%
- behavioural treatment program:
• after the appearance of unbelted passenger, used written prompts
• sent letters to ___________ written by the director of the Head and Spinal Cord Injury Prevention Project, advocating the use of seat belts
• also sent a second letter to some cartoonists
- results: depiction of seat-belt use increased to 41%
• 4 cartoonists provided original _______ for the Head Injury Association of Kansas
• unknown whether media depictions of safety belt use among cartoon characters had any impact on actual ___
2. presenting __ for desirable behaviour
Ward and Carnes (2002):
- college football ___________ were not performing well on:
• “reads” (proper positioning to cover a specified area on the field during a play)
• “drops” (moving to the correct position in response to positioning of the offense)
• tackles (stopping the ball carrier)
- behavioural treatment program:
• performance in practice was videotaped and analyzed
• were asked to select _____ that improved on their baseline levels
• performance in practice was publicly posted on a chart on the locker-room wall
- results: performance in practice and games improved
- having the athletes set performance goals and post their progress acted as EOs that increased the reinforcing potency of ________, and improved their performance
3. decreasing response ______ for desirable behaviour
- similar to nudge theory: behaviour manipulated by changing the ease or difficulty of performing it (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008, 2021)
Brothers et al. (1994):
- setting: Princeton Child Development Institute, a treatment centre for children with autism
- 25 employees working in administrative, office, and instructional areas
- baseline: weighed amount of __________ paper in the trash
- behavioural treatment program: multiple baseline across settings
• staff received _____ about recycling in their pay envelopes
• high response effort: memo defined recyclable and nonrecyclable paper; indicated recyclable paper could be deposited in a container at a central location
• low response effort: defined recyclable paper; announced presence of small _______ recycling bins
- results:
• high response effort condition: recyclable paper in the trash was 40% lower than baseline
• low response effort condition: 89% less paper in the trash
• over 1 year, trash removal costs decreased US$1,230 and _______ sheets of paper were recycled
4. removing or modifying existing SD for undesirable behaviour
- overt or immediate SDs are ______ to identify than covert or distant SDs
- desirable alternative behaviour should be encouraged instead
Goldiamond (1965):
- 29-year-old graduate student in marital therapy
- 2 years previous, his wife committed the “________ ________” with his best friend
- husband screamed at his wife for hours; then he felt ashamed of his behaviour and spent hours _______
- behavioural treatment program: changing antecedents
• rearranged rooms and furniture in couple’s house
• wife bought herself a new ______
• therapist encouraged couple to go out to night spots, where social norms prohibited screaming
- results:
• decrease in screaming led to decrease in sulking
• new environments also served as SDs for _________ conversational behaviour
5. presenting __ for undesirable behaviour
Kennedy (1994):
- three 20-year-olds with severe developmental disabilities in a special education class: Edgar, Sally, and Ernest
- problem behaviours: ___________ (persistent repetitive) behaviours, self-injury, and aggression
- functional assessment revealed that problem behaviours occurred when teachers made task demands (e.g., putting away dishes, stacking chairs) at high rates (4 per minute), but not for task demands at low rates (one per 2.5 minutes) or social comments
- function of problem behaviour was ______ from high task demands
- behavioural treatment program:
• teachers presented demands in 10-minute sessions, starting at low rates (one per 2.5 minutes)
• demands were gradually increased, as long as problem behaviours remained low
- results:
• task demands increased to 4 per minute with no increase in problem behaviours
• positive social ______ (smiling, laughing, saying “I like you”) also increased
• results maintained in 4-month follow-up
- starting with a low rate of demands and gradually increasing them served as an AO for ______
6. increasing response ______ for undesirable behaviour
- the opposite of a nudge is “sludge”
Zhou et al. (2000):
- four women, aged 33 to 51, with profound developmental disabilities; non-ambulatory, no expressive language ability
- SIB: hand ________ that caused damage to the mouth and face
- functional analysis:
• SIB less frequent when leisure materials were available, or when staff gave them social attention
• SIB more frequent when women were alone
• hand mouthing was maintained by _________ reinforcement
- behavioural treatment program:
• baseline: % intervals containing SIB recorded
• response-effort condition: women wore flexible _______ containing stays to increase rigidity, which made it harder to bend their arms
- results: hand mouthing declined to near-zero levels
• a discriminative stimulus (SD) indicates that reinforcement is available following a particular behaviour
e.g., your phone rings (SD) → you answer it (behaviour) → you talk to your friend/______ attention (consequences)
• a motivating operation (MO) alters the _____ of a reinforcer, and therefore affects the likelihood of the behaviour that results in the reinforcer
e.g., you slept in and are running late (MO) and your phone rings
Running late is an abolishing operation (AO) that temporarily decreases the reinforcement of talking to your friend, and reduces the behaviour of answering the phone.
7. _____________ reinforcement (NCR): a form of antecedent intervention in which stimuli that are known reinforcers are delivered on a schedule independent of behaviour--not dependent on responses
- diminishes undesirable behaviours, because reinforcers that maintain it are frequently available
- may function as an AO, reducing motivation to perform undesirable behaviour
- reinforcers can be delivered on a fixed-time (FT) or variable-time (VT) schedule
e.g., FT 30" schedule: reinforcer delivered every 30 seconds--regardless of behaviour
- schedule should be gradually “_______” (time duration increased)
- is often combined with DRO, which decreases adventitious reinforcement of the undesirable behaviour that may occur in a time-based NCR schedule
- can employ
• positive reinforcement (e.g., teacher placing a child on her lap during story time, so the child will not disruptively seek attention)
• negative reinforcement (e.g., break from instructional requests to reduce problem behaviours)
• _________ reinforcement (e.g., physical manipulation of a string of beads to reduce SIB)
Kahng et al. (2000):
- Nancy, a 50-year-old woman with severe intellectual disability
- self-injurious behaviours: head and body hitting
- functional analysis determined _________ was social-positive reinforcement
- behavioural treatment program:
• baseline: brief attention given after SIB
• treatment phase: NCR of attention started on FT 10" schedule and thinned to FT 5'
- results:
• both SIBs declined to near ____
- pros & cons of NCR:
evidence shows it produces robust effects across a variety of behaviours
____ to apply--does not require monitoring for a behaviour to occur before reinforcer is delivered
when used with extinction, NCR may reduce extinction-induced response bursts
free access to NCR may reduce motivation to engage in desirable behaviour
____________ pairings of undesirable behaviour and NCR can strengthen the behaviour
as no behaviour is being strengthened, it is controversial to call it noncontingent reinforcement
How can antecedent interventions be combined to increase efficiency in a restaurant?
- manager J.B. had a recurring problem in his restaurant: takeout orders were _______ items from butter to ribs
- a pen was used to check off the receipt, but it kept getting lost
- J.B. bought lanyards and Sharpies in different colours
- each staff member got a different coloured Sharpie on a lanyard, which was used to check off receipts when order complete
- if there was a problem with an order, the manager could determine who had checked off the receipt
- errors were treated as a “________ opportunity”
- the first week, there were zero missed items; in the long run, errors were ______