Behavior Analysis
LECTURE3
INCREASING THE FREQUENCY OF BEHAVIOR REINFORCEMENT
Review
 We are studying applied behavior analysis, which is
the attempt to solve problems by providing
antecedents and consequences that change behavior
 There are broadly two types of behavior problems


Those that don’t occur enough
Those that occur too much
 Todays lesson is going to focus on the first problem
 Can anyone think of any examples?
 So the question is, how do we increase the frequency
of behavior?
Law of Effect
 The law of effect has to do with the idea that the strength of
behavior depends on the effect it has on the environment
Law of effect: in any given situation, the probability of a behavior
occurring is a function of the consequences that behavior has had, in
that situation, in the past.
 Law of effect was created by one of the earliest behaviorists, E.L.
Thorndike, who near enough invented the field of educational
psychology.
 This principle recognized that whether a behavior is repeated
depends on the effects the behavior has had in the past
Law of effect: behavior is a function of its consequences
Reinforcement
 The law of effect draws our attention to the
important role that environmental consequences
play in behavior
 It also provides the basis for probably the most
important tool we have for changing behavior:
reinforcement
Reinforcement: the procedure of providing
consequences for a behavior that increase or maintain
the frequency of that behavior
Reinforcement
 Reinforcement is a natural tool that engulfs our everyday lives
 When you hit a nail and it holds the wood together, that consequence
reinforces your use of the hammer
 When you hang clothes to dry, and they do actually dry, that
consequence reinforces your behavior of hanging clothes in the sun
 However it is also a tool we can use to solve behavior
problems
 If a behavior does not occur enough, we can increase its
frequency by providing reinforcing consequences.
 Such consequences are called reinforcers
Reinforcer: an event that, when made contingent on a behavior,
increases or maintains the frequency of that behavior
Reinforcement
 Note reinforcer is not synonym for reward
 Why?
 Because a reward is defined by consensus, where as reinforcers
are defined by results
 In other words what would generally be thought of as
rewarding by ‘most’ people will not be reinforcing to
everyone.
 Reinforcers are defined by their ability to maintain
or increase behavior.
 In order to find this out we have to study the results
of applying a reinforcer
Reinforcement
 Example: are the words mm-hmmm a reward?
 No, most people would probably agree that those words are
not a reward
 But could they be a reinforcer?
 Joel Greenspoon asked participants to say as many words as
they could. Every time they came up with a plural noun i.e.
horses, bananas, books etc. he would say the words mmhmmm.
 What he found was that the sound reinforced the behavior of
saying plural nouns, because participant increased the amount
of plural nouns they used compared to control
Kinds of Reinforcers
 There are broadly two types of reinforcers: positive
and negative
Positive reinforcer: a reinforcing event in which
something is added following a behavior
Negative reinforcer: a reinforcing event in which
something is removed following a behavior
Positive reinforcer
 When a favorable event or outcome follows an action,
that action is more likely to occur in future – this is
positive reinforcement.
 Example


After you write a good essay your tutor says to you ‘good job’. Making
it more likely that you will repeat this behavior in the future
After you exceed the months sales bonus you receive a monetary
bonus, making more likely that you will work hard for the bonus in
the future
 In these examples ‘good job’ and ‘monetary bonus’ are
reinforcers that are added to the situation
Negative reinforcer
 In negative reinforcement a behavior is strengthened by
stopping, removing or avoiding a negative outcome or
aversive stimulus


For example, if your parents are arguing then you stay in your bedroom
out of the way, being away from the stress of the argument makes it
likely you will repeat this behavior in the future.
You leave for work early on a Monday morning in order to avoid traffic.
When you do avoid the traffic the response is strengthened
 Here seeing your parents fight and avoiding traffic were
negative outcomes that were avoided by performing specific
behaviors. These behaviors were therefore strengthened.
 By eliminating these undesirable outcomes, the preventative
behaviors become more likely to occur again

Another example: nagging. A person will often do the desired behavior in
order to avoid any more nagging, this is negative reinforcement
Summary of positive and negative reinforcement
 Every situation involves behavior and consequence
 If the consequence of engaging in a behavior is appetitive (+) then
the behavior is likely to be repeated in the future. This is positive
reinforcement.
 If the consequence has been experienced as aversive in the past (-)
then the behavior will attempt to reduce contact with the aversive
outcome. If the behavior succeeds in avoiding the aversive outcome,
then it will likely be repeated in the future.


Example, imagine you're in a club and a good looking boy starts talking to you,
you want him to hang around. So you buy him a drink and he hangs around.
Next time you’re in this situation do you think you will repeat the behavior? This
is positive reinforcement, the likelihood of you repeating the behavior following
the episode has increased.
Now imagine you're in a club and an annoying boy starts talking to you but you
want him to leave. So you ignore him and he leaves. Next time you're in this
situation do you think you will repeat the behavior? This is negative
reinforcement, the likelihood of repeating the behavior following the episode has
increased.
Primary and Secondary reinforcers
 There are other ways of classifying reinforcers
worthy of discussion.
 All reinforcers can be classified as primary or
secondary
Primary reinforcers: reinforcers that are not
dependent on their association with other reinforcers
Secondary reinforcers: reinforcers that are dependent
on their association with other reinforcers
Primary reinforcers
 Primary reinforcers tend to include environmental
stimuli that include basic human needs, and
therefore are often concerned with biological
processes





Food
Oxygen
Water
Warmth
Sexual stimulation
Secondary reinforcers
 Secondary reinforcers depend on learning. This means
that they acquire their reinforcing powers through their
association with other reinforcers.

For example, if a parent smiles when providing food to the baby, and
the food is reinforcing, the smiles will become reinforcing.
 Secondary reinforcers get their name from the fact that
they are ultimately derived from, and secondary to,
primary reinforcers
 What does this business of pairing neutral events with
reinforcing stimuli remind you of?

Pavlov?
 If you make a list of the majority of things that you do in
your life and they will most probably be secondary
reinforcers
Contrived and Natural reinforcers
 There are two further ways to categories reinforcers:
Contrived reinforcers: reinforcers that have been
arranged by someone for the purpose of modifying
behavior
Natural reinforcers: reinforcers that have not been
arranged by someone for the purposes of modifying
behavior; spontaneous or unplanned reinforcers
Contrived and Natural reinforcers
 Imagine after getting a question correct, the teacher
smiles and winks at the little boy. The smile and the wink
have been put in place, on purpose, by the teacher in
order to positively reinforce the behavior. This is a
contrived reinforcer.
 Now imagine a little girl smiles and winks at the boy, this
is more like a natural reinforcer as the girl is not trying to
increase the boys behavior.
 Lets look at some studies that illustrate the use of
reinforcement:
Ann doesn't’t socialize
 Allen at el (1964) studied a little girl who showed
very little interest in interacting with other children.
She did enjoy interacting with adults however.
 Since adult attention seemed to be reinforcing, the
researchers decided that the teachers should only
provide attention to Ann only when she interacting
with another child
 How would you do this study?
This is how they did it
 Two observers took a tally sheet and counted interactions
every morning for five days in order to get a baseline

What is a baseline?
 At the end of the baseline period, teachers started
providing special attention to Ann whenever she
interacted with other children. If she played alone, the
teachers would pay her no attention

Reinforcement via attention was the intervention
 The researchers then again counted interactions and
expected an increase in the amount of contact she had
with other children
Results
 However they did not find the expected increase.
Apparently the teachers comment drew Anns attention
towards the teacher, and not towards the child.

Teacher attention was therefore not a reinforcer for Ann.
 If one consequence proves ineffective then we have to try
another! And that’s what the researchers did.
 Now the teacher would give Ann a toy or utensil to use in
the ongoing activity as the new reinforcer.
 The new reinforcement produced a dramatic change in
Ann’s behavior


During baseline Ann spent 10% of her time playing with other
children
After the intervention Ann spent 60% of her time playing with other
children
ABAB reversal design
 Importantly, after researchers had increased Ann’s social




behavior, they wanted to make sure that it was their
intervention that was powering the results.
They therefore asked teachers to stop reinforcing playing
with the group.
Social play immediately dropped back to baseline
Then teachers began reinforcing again, and the behavior
shot up to 60% again
Of course a teacher would be unlikely to use ABAB design
in real life

Why?
 Lets consider a more difficult problem
Mary refuses to eat
 Mary was admitted to hospital because she claimed her food






was being poisoned and she refused to eat
Because of her low weight, the nurses took to spoon feeding
her.
The goal was to get Mary to feed herself
Mary seemed to take good care of herself; she always kept her
clothes neat and clean
This gave the researchers, Teodoro Ayllon and Jack Michael,
an idea
They asked nurses to continue to feed Mary, but to be careless
when doing it i.e. spill food on her dress
The idea was to get Mary to eat on her own, to avoid getting
her dress messy
Results
 During an 8 day baseline period, Mary ate 5 meals on
her own, was spoon fed 12 meals, and refused to eat
on 7 occasions
 Once the nurses became sloppy, this began to
change.
 After a while she began feeding herself on all
occasions, she skipped fewer meals, she gained 21
pounds in weight and she was discharged from
hospital
Rules for using reinforcement
 This course is not a training manual, however all of
you have the opportunity to use reinforcement in
your every day interactions with others
 And some of you will be in occupations where
reinforcement is crucial (teaching, counseling, health
care etc.)
 Just in case any of you leave here thinking about
employing reinforcement techniques to increase
behavior, lets go through some basic rules:
1. Define the Target Behavior
 We cant implement an effective intervention if we
don’t have a clear idea of what behavior we are trying
to change.

This means that you should quite literally write a brief
description of the behavior
 Remember here that you should be identifying
behaviors that the person should do, not behaviors
which they should not do

‘Not running around so much’ and ‘not being so active’ do not
work as were trying to increase the behavior
2. Select appropriate reinforcers
 Before you can reinforce the behavior, you have to select one
of more reinforcers. There are a few rules that will help you
make a good choice
1. Use positive reinforcers. Stay away from negative reinforcers
as they involve aversives, and aversives have some serious
side effects (more about this at a later lecture)
2. Use secondary reinforcers – primary reinforcers tend to
satiate very quickly, where as secondary reinforces tend to
hold their power
3. Use natural reinforcer – where possible allow people to
contact natural reinforcers rather than contrived reinforcers
i.e. let them see that certain behaviors are reinforcing in and
of themselves. Often it will be very difficult to do this.
3. Make reinforcers immediate and certain
 Two major factors can affect the power of reinforcement:
 How quickly the reinforcer follows the behavior
 The closer the target behavior is followed by the reinforcer, the more likely the
reinforcer will be effective.
 Time delay allows for other behavior to occur which could then be reinforced
 How likely the reinforcer is to follow the behavior
 The more likely the target behavior is to result in reinforcement, the more rapidly
the behavior will increase in strength
 Its important not to hand out reinforcement all the time, it must be contingent on
the target behavior, and only on the target behavior
 If you don’t follow these rules then you may see little effect from you
effort
4. Monitor results
 In applied behavior analysis, we have to monitor the
result of every intervention, usually on a daily basis,
and modify the intervention in accordance with the
data obtained
 If you fail to monitor the results in a formal way, how
will you know if the intervention has worked?
Problems with reinforcement
 You may look at reinforcement and think it looks easy.
Remember that this is a beginner course, and that it will
take lots of time and practice to perfect.
 Nevertheless you should be able to see how
reinforcement plays a part in our everyday lives.
 So before you leave here you should know some of the
negative sides of reinforcement:



Inappropriate use
Moral objections
Negative side effects
Inappropriate use
 The argument has been made that reinforcement can
make things worse. And this can be the case:


Imagine the truck driver who gets paid by the mile – he is being
reinforced to drive fast and for long hours.
Its hardly surprising that many accidents occur because of truck
drivers falling asleep at the wheel!
 Another issue is where reinforcement can come from
sources other than the person designing the intervention

Imagine the school child who does’t raise his hand as the teacher
wants, but receive the approval of the class when they laugh at his
witty comment.
Bootleg reinforcement: reinforcement that is not part of,
and tends to undermine, an intervention
Moral objections
 Some people think that ABA interventions are
manipulative and controlling
 And that it puts too much trust into the person
intervening. What right do we have to change
someone else’s behavior?
 Others say that reinforcement makes changing too
easy and too pleasant and that there is virtue in
suffering
Negative side effects
 People think have suggested that those who have
knowingly been reinforced for particular behaviors
will go through the rest of their life expecting reward
or praise.

For example, it is said that if students receive recognition for
behaving well and learning, then they will no longer work hard
and learn when such benefits are no longer available
 This would be a strong argument if it were true, but
it isn't. (see Dickinson et al, 1974, who tracked the
progress of students who underwent a reward
scheme)
Negative side effects
 One particular problem that can arise is called
behavioral contrast
Behavioral contrast: the tendency for a reinforced
behavior to occur less often in situations in which it
has not been reinforced.
 It is possible that although the intervention may
cause an increase in target behavior in one setting, it
may be lost in another.
Flashcard
 Law of effect
 the probability of a behavior occurring is a function of the consequences
that behavior has had in that situation in the past; behavior is a function
of its consequences
 Reinforcement
 procedure of providing consequences for a behavior that increase or
maintain the frequency of that behavior
 Reinforcer
 event that, when made contingent on a behavior, increases or maintains
the frequency of that behavior
 Positive reinforcer
 a reinforcing event in which something is added following a behavior
 Negative reinforcer
 a reinforcing event in which something is removed following a behavior
Flashcard
 Primary reinforcers
 reinforcers that are not dependent on their association with other reinforcers
 Secondary reinforcers
 reinforcers that are dependent on their association with other reinforcers
 Contrived reinforcers
 reinforcers that have been arranged by someone for the purpose of modifying
behavior
 Natural reinforcers
 reinforcers that have not been arranged by someone for the purpose of modifying
behavior; spontaneous or unplanned reinforcers
 Bootleg reinforcement
 reinforcement that is not part of, and tends to undermine, an intervention
 Behavioural contrast
 tendency for a reinforced behavior to occur less often in situations in which it
has not been reinforced