Behaviourist At Play

Apparently it’s National Bird Day and it’s a B.F.F. (B.F. Friday). 

I’m going to deviate slightly to something not exactly behaviour analytic (but it does involve data). The following is my top 10 albums of 2017 based entirely on average listens per month.  Albums had to be released in 2017.  My total listens were then divided by the number of months in the year the album was out based on its release date.   In order from least to most:

10.  Lindstrøm - It’s Alright Between Us As It Is

9. Gordon Downie - Introduce Yerself

8. Bomba Estéreo - Ayo

7. Beth Ditto - Fake Sugar

6. Broken Social Scene - Hug of Thunder

5. The National - Sleep Well Beast

4. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Choir of the Mind

3. The Beaches - Late Show

2.  Stars -   There Is No Love in Fluorescent Light 

Hello there!  Seems like an interesting assignment.  I assume you’ll be reading Skinner’s About Behaviorism as part of the course.  It is my go-to reference when I’m looking for a radical behaviourist view on topics covered by other schools of psychology.  Still, Skinner didn’t cover everything and there is much left to unpack and explore through a radical behaviourist lens.  

What topic interests you lately?  What in your own life have you questioned or been curious about why you do what you do?   Are there societal problems that your feel could benefit from a radical behavioural view to problem solving? 

I know for myself, I have recently been exploring topics of grief and compassion - how it’s formed, how it can evoke other responses from a behavioural lens.  I’m also interested in how behaviourism can inform practice in harm reduction and rehabilitation vs. the more common practices based on punishment and extinction.          

I’ll open this question to others on Tumblr and Twitter: Any other topics this student can explore?  I’ll reply below with responses I get.

I’d be happy to hear back from you on what you went with and your ideas there.

Cheers!

Hi Anonymous - good question!

Interlocking behavioural contingencies is the term used to describe the inter-play between multiple arrangements of antecedents, behaviours and consequences occurring together in one environment.  Here, one’s behaviour can be the antecedent to another person’s response, or the consequence of one’s response can be the antecedent to another.  Think of multiple 3-term contingencies happening at once and at times overlapping with each other.  On a larger scale, these are referred to as metacontingencies.   

The easiest example of interlocking behavioural contingencies  to give is that of the relationship between parent and child.  The child’s cries are the antecedent to a parent responding. The parent’s response may stop the crying by providing the child with something they needed/wanted.  This reinforces the child’s cries.  At the same time, the stopped cries reinforces the parent’s response(s).  Whatever the parent did worked and therefore, they are likely to respond in similar ways the next time their child cries.   

The relationships between teacher behaviour and student behaviour is another setting example.  You see teachers arranging multiple contingencies via their seating arrangements, organization of materials, instruction delivery, praise and reward systems, error correction and feedback.  These produce all kinds of responses from students - intended or unintended.  Student responses are either reinforced or punished and at the same time, student responses can either reinforce or punish the teacher’s responses.  The teacher may tweak their strategies slightly in order to control what’s happening in the room.  This on-going interplay between teacher and student behaviour eventually shapes the culture of the classroom.  

Interlocking behavioural contingencies is a more dynamic way of looking at the interplay of behaviours occurring in systems such as families, the classroom, the workplace, our government and our communities.  The classic 3-term contingency in isolation is too simple to explain the interactions occurring among the people and their behaviours in each of these environments. 

Hope this was a good introduction to your question.  

Cheers!

A good article summarizing the research often cited in support of the claim that rewards ruin student’s intrinsic motivation (it doesn’t).   

Unlike in the studies cited in the article, we don’t typically reward students for things they are already doing well.  This is because the skill is already learned and a source of reinforcement is in effect somewhere.  There is no need for us to mess with a good thing and rearrange contingencies.  Rather, we aim to reward (i.e., reinforce) the behaviours/skills we want to see more of - from a frequency, duration, latency, fluency or quality perspective.    

If you want your child to use more manners at the dinner table or put their laundry away, reinforce good manners and putting their laundry away.  If you want your student to stay in their seats during a lesson, reinforce in-seat behaviours after a period of time (i.e., catch them before they’re likely to get out of their seat).  If you want your student to learn the order of operations, reinforce their following the order of operations.  This is a proactive plan focused on watching for the positive behaviours/skills you want to see more of instead of a reactive approach to negative behaviours (or lack thereof) that uses redirection and correction.

Then, when your child/student is performing at optimal rates/levels/duration etc., you plan to fade reinforcement.  This means that instead of reinforcing every time you see them putting their clothes in the laundry basket, you can do so every 2-3 times (or after a slightly longer period of time in the case of a behaviour where duration of time is important), then maybe once a week etc. or move to a point system/allowance.  This is how skills are maintained over time. In some cases, a more naturally occurring source of reinforcement kicks in.  The newly acquired skill may allow them greater access to things/experiences (e.g., learning to drive, navigate public transit) or the skill becomes inherently beneficial/pleasing (e.g., enjoying books now that you can read).

Hi there anonymous!

In any example of both delayed and trace conditioning, it’s about conveying the timing of the conditioned stimulus (CS) compared to the unconditional stimulus (US).  I found a good figure in one of my old textbooks (The Essentials of Conditioning and Learning by Michael Domjan) that shows the timing differences of the CS compared to the US.  

So in delayed conditioning the CS starts and then during its presence/action the US shows up (we’re talking seconds here usually) so that their presence is overlapped together for a brief period.  In trace conditioning the CS starts and stops and then some time later, the US shows up.  There is no overlap in their presence.

We can make example of the same CS and US in both types of conditioning. Let’s use taste aversion as an example.  In this case the US is that yucky, nauseous feeling in the back of our throat that makes us want to throw-up and milk is the CS.

In delayed conditioning we would be chugging a carton of milk and then all of a sudden the nauseous feelings start to happen and we gag or throw-up mid-chugging.  The next time we go for milk, we might have a gag response in the absence of actual nausea.  Milk has become conditioned with gagging and throwing up so we will likely avoid milk for a period of time.  This can happen if we’ve ever eaten something that was sour or rancid and didn't realize it until after we started to consume it.  For a while afterwards we don’t trust that the milk won’t be sour thanks to delayed conditioning. 

In trace conditioning, we chug the milk.  Then maybe, we go sit down and watch a show on Netflix or something.  Some time later, the feelings of nausea emerge and we gag or throw up.  A similar taste aversion develops where the offering of milk elicits the gag response because of our previous experience with what we can only assume or associate with was the milk. This can happen if you’ve ever experienced food poisoning which we know occurs hours after we’ve eaten the bad food. The food we ate earlier that day is avoided in the future because of the associations with throwing it up.  I avoided Chicken McNuggets for much of my childhood because of trace conditioning.  

Hope these examples help in your studies!

It’s one thing to be proactive and ask about the presence and storage of any firearms in the homes your children may visit.  A gun safe, trigger locks and ammunition stored separately from the firearms themselves are all good antecedent approaches to gun safety.

But do you know what your child would do if they came across one - either in the open, or improperly stored at someone's house?  How would they respond? 

Like these teens did?  http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/my-kid-would-never-do-that--gun-safety--part-2-472919107983.  

How about these kids?  http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/my-kid-would-never-do-that--gun-safety--part-4-472919619641

As the videos demonstrate it’s not always enough to talk about gun safety. Children and youth need skills training and practice on how to respond to a found gun.  Behavioural Skills Training (BST) is a teaching technique designed to teach others how to respond in certain scenarios such as finding a gun. It is more than just a lecture on safety.  It involves role play and practice in a classroom and a real-life setting where the learner demonstrates the response they need to do and not just tell you what they should do.  Saying and doing are two different behaviours.  BST by design reinforces the actual response so that it is more likely to occur in the future.  

From that same Dateline segment, here are clips showing BST run by Dr. Raymond Miltenberger and the follow-up in-situ tests.   

http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/my-kid-would-never-do-that--gun-safety--part-5-472919107721

My rates of blogging and tweeting have diminished over the past year and a bit. In fact, this post has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple months, waiting for the right time or the right words to describe the effects on my life.   

Simply put: I lost a dear friend.  And from there, I lost the motivation to write. 

…  I lost the momentum to analyze the everyday things we do as people and talk about it. Space and time was now taken up by the many signals for grief - responses that were framed by not only the loss of the person, but also the associations that came with their treating cancer.  [Insert a whole bunch of swear words here] because that’s where my verbal behaviour goes when I say the word, cancer (#$%@!). There were these overwhelming feelings of empathy for a friend now forced to be a widow.  There was sadness that our friend wouldn’t get more time being a dad. I felt angry - almost on behalf of my friend - because it just. wasn’t. fair.  For a while driving, like I had done so many times to the hospital and back elicited grief, requiring a few extra minutes being with that feeling then preparing myself for what I needed to do when I arrived.  Music held stronger meaning, then disappointment when I couldn’t share the latest find, “Check this out”.  With each signal, I became mindful and started to practice acceptance - not of my friend being gone but of the feelings I have because of it. 

…  In the months before and after, disseminating the work of behaviour analysis didn’t seem as fulfilling as disseminating my presence, the pictures, the memories…laughs, tears and hugs. It was now more rewarding to just be with the people important to us and take in what was happening.        

…  Writing blog posts about our simple behaviours and why we do the things we do wasn’t so simple when working from a deficit.  The response effort was greater and yet sources of reinforcement were lacking, existing elsewhere perhaps. Response effort was instead put into planning trips and yearly events because these sources of reinforcement were still so important for us to access. Even there, we couldn’t help but recognize that someone was missing and therefore, it was not quite the same. Signal more loss and grief.

… And then connection with other sources of reinforcement started to happen: we adopted a rescue dog; I started playing trombone again and joined a band; I became involved in my provincial professional association advocating for more behaviour analysis in our public education; another friend and I took up rock climbing, participating in our first endurance climb for a cancer charity.  None of these experiences replace the ones I will miss but they did bring happiness and mastery to my life. Got to do something that matters.  

[image description: three-photo collage of: 1) husband and wife kneeling with their black and white pointer on leash in a field; 2) side view of writer playing trombone in concert; 3) writer and friend side hugging with their climbing harnesses on in front of a climbing wall.  Photo credit for 2nd photo: Irene Marie Dorey Photography]

I am baking, reading, gardening and maybe now, I am ready to be writing and being “social” again on social media.  I do miss the connections and discussions. I hope you as readers come back and find my thoughts and analysis interesting again.

Love (the ultimate R+),

Figured today was as good as ever to pull out the ole Science and Human Behavior.

To answer the question of, “Why do people do X?” I turn to the science of behaviour.

Hi Anonymous

Good points.  It may be too simplistic to highlight a specific behaviour contingency while referring to the motivating operations as a matter of deprivation.  As you said, some action potential inside our bodies is signaling “hunger” vs. “full”.  Other events inside our bodies signal cold vs. hot, averse touch vs. pleasing touch, bright light vs. dark etc. This recognition of an internal event as a stimulus fits within the radical behaviourist perspective. Our only problem is we can’t see its ON/OFF switch to more reliably predict the onset of a behaviour.

What I like about the terms deprivation and satiation are their fit within a molar view of behaviours.  Molar view of behaviour looks at the bigger picture and patterns of events in time (see William Baum’s work). Here, we may be able to track events in time and study their effects on states of deprivation. This applies to any reinforcer - social, tangible, sensorial. For example, for how long am I able to sit at a desk and work on a project before I get up and walk around to move?  Does that change if earlier in the day I ran on the treadmill for 30 minutes?  As another example, replace walking (used above) with checking social media. Does that change if I just had a lunch break and was freely checking my social media accounts?       

This type of harm-reduction program has in it principles of behaviour analysis for managing and controlling access to alcohol, a highly potent reinforcer for alcoholics. 

An abstinence program essentially puts usual alcohol getting behaviours on extinction (purposely withholding or blocking access to a known reinforcer). With extinction can come other induced behaviour such as aggression, emotional responses associated with irritability, frustration, anger, a variability in behaviours to get the same reinforcer (e.g., resorting to rubbing alcohol) and a resurgence of behaviours previously associated with alcohol-getting (e.g., stealing, hustling).  These behaviours are just as likely to be problematic without much to offer in the way of support or intervention. They may cause the person to come in contact with emergency health services or the police.

Instead this harm reduction program puts access to alcohol on an interval schedule of reinforcement.  Quantities and timing are managed by nurses. By being offered in a stable environment, the signal of reinforcement is clear and predictable (i.e., the person doesn’t need to go outside of this repertoire looking for other sources and potentially putting themselves in risky situations). Withdrawal effects can be controlled for, hopefully minimizing emotional and physical responses. No abstinence. No extinction. No extinction effects.  

The other advantage to this approach is that by showing up on site, people can now access other reinforcers such as social interaction, leisure or work opportunities and connection to services that can help them meet their needs. If their number one reinforcer is being accessed on a fixed and predictable schedule, this leaves time and space to acquire the social-emotional/self-management skills that will address the motivating factors that drive excessive drinking. As these skills are acquired, the reinforcement schedule can be carefully and systematically thinned (e.g., slight reductions in quantity or increasing the interval).

Well, I probably committed blogging faux pas number 1 by going on and on about toileting in my last post. Not only that, but I have come to realize that I use toileting in a lot of my examples of behaviour analysis principles both on this blog as well as in my training and lectures for staff and students.

Motivating operations (MO); where the need to urinate is the MO while the toilet is the discriminative stimulus (or a tree)

Thinning and fading reinforcement, as in, you can get to a point where a tangible reinforcer, like Smarties for urinating in the toilet, are no longer necessary because the more direct consequence (e.g., dry pants) is effective.

Going to the bathroom as escape/avoidance behaviour.

Task analyses.

Stimulus generalization (and the different toilet variations we encounter in our travels).

“Toileting Data Fridays” was a moniker given to my team’s office block where we would update and analyze the data from our active toilet. training cases and update the parents on next steps.

Stimulus fading and shaping when there are fears of toilets (and letting go of pull-ups).

What can I say?  Toileting is a pretty universal behaviour.

B.F. Skinner (from Notebooks p. 93)

Skinner prefaced this tidbit with the heading, ‘Context’.  We say, “Context is key” to understanding why a behaviour occurs in some situations but not others.  What behaviour analysts mean is that the occurrence of behaviour (including private events like thoughts and emotions) are controlled by the presence of events and items in our environment. 

Think of forming context and turning a behaviour on or off like working a studio sound mixer.  Our behaviour can be multiply controlled by any number of events or items in various combinations.  Each event or item has its own dial.  Toilet paper gets ‘mixed in with’ (i.e., conditioned with) toilets, toileting, wiping etc. all of which occur in rooms we’ve labelled, “bathroom”. Have a number of these conditions present and context for a behaviour is turned on. Isolate one or more of these items without the other(s) and related responses might not occur - like a “wrong place, wrong time” off switch.    

Now turn the language dial up and condition words and phrases within these contexts...

Toileting, and by association, toilet paper may evoke labels such as: “private”, “bum” “dirty”, “poo”, “gross” etc.  Those words also have meaning depending on past conditioning that has occurred (e.g., saying, “gross” or “dirty” tends to be socially averse; “private” is a rule we made that controls where certain responses should and should not occur).  Mount that toilet paper roll by your desk and you’ll be breaking some rule about where toilet paper is “supposed” to be while evoking thoughts of bums and poo.