All about Positive and Negative Reinforcement

Transcript:

  Hey there, I'm Crystal. I'm a behavior analyst and I'm here to help you uncomplicate the complicated world of behavior. We are going to get into all things behavior here. Strategies, interventions, support, data, assessments. The good, the frustrating, and especially the complicated. I'm a behavior analyst who loves to educate, be positive, and most importantly, be proactive.

This podcast is your place to learn more about behavior analysis and the beautiful benefits that come with being positive and proactive. This is your uninterrupted time to talk behavior with your bestie. So grab your headphones, your walking shoes, or pull up that comfy chair and get ready to learn.

This episode, we'll go over the specific details on what positive reinforcement is and what it isn't. This episode will kick off a series on reinforcement that I have been dying to cover, but like I said before, I felt it was really important to go over the functions and I will probably mention them every episode because I want to make sure that that knowledge is cemented in your brains because I can't simply tell you what strategies to use. I need you to learn why the strategies are effective and what exactly is making it effective. Knowing that creates meaningful change for everyone. Throwing random strategies at behavior is like throwing darts in the dark. You may get lucky and it works or you may not. And when you're not lucky, that doesn't feel good for anyone. I'm saying this because emulating strategies can only work for a time because when the function of behavior changes or is no longer relevant, so then is that strategy that you've been using. Behavior analysis is about seeing behavior functionally to solve challenging behavior in a positive and meaningful way.

So in this series, we will be going over both negative and positive reinforcement, negative and positive punishment, and most importantly, some of my favorite ways to use positive reinforcement and the different strategies that work well in homes and at school. But that would be a ton of information for one episode so I'm breaking it up. So today I'm just going to cover some of the basics that you need to know. I'm going to go over strategies after negative and positive reinforcement and punishment because I know that you've listened to episodes two through four and you have some understanding of behavior functions and how to recognize antecedents triggers and setting events.

I decided to cover positive and negative reinforcement before anything else, because everyone seems to want positive reinforcement or state that they're using positive reinforcement when they aren't. So my day in a nutshell includes waking up somewhere between 4 and 5 a. m. It's a good habit and it's a bad habit.

Sometimes I wish I could sleep in. I head downstairs and go straight to making my expresso. I've been making that oat milk brown sugar expresso from Starbucks and it is game changer. So delicious. I get that going, it's 4 :30, 5 a. m., and then I go straight over to review FBAs and behavior intervention plans because that's my life.

I assess, I do functional behavior assessments for a living, and part of that is reviewing the previous functional behavior assessments and their current behavior intervention plan. I always review these before my third observation, and then again right before I sit down to write my actual report. I can guarantee that somewhere under recommendations or strategies on those documents is listed positive reinforcement.

And let's not forget to mention that some of these plans are actually specifically called positive behavior intervention supports. But the crazy thing is, is that when I observe or have observed, depending on where I'm at in my process, is that all I see is the use of punishment with a complete lack of positive reinforcement.

I directly ask on the interview forms what positive systems of reinforcement are being used to support positive behavior. And I'm not kidding, the answer pretty frequently is a punishment procedure. Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not pointing blame. I am pointing this out because I see a need. I am saying that there needs to be a higher understanding of how to use positive reinforcement to change behavior.

Because what I see often is that people are telling kids good job, positive praise, or using token economy systems. and saying that they're using positive reinforcement. And while yes, token economy is a system of positive reinforcement and positive praise statements are great, they aren't the only factors that need to be considered to make reinforcement effective.

Or the details or strategies that are listed in the positive behavior support plan. Are actually negative reinforcement and sometimes negative punishment. I often see that these terms get used interchangeably and that's a problem. The actual positive reinforcement that we want isn't actually present in the plan because our understanding of what we're doing is a little bit off.

So I mentioned punishment, which I will get into on this next episode. Because I feel that that word brings a lot of negative pairings and associations. And I really want to be clear on what punishment --both negative and positive --is and what it looks like. Because I guarantee if you're a parent, you have used a form of punishment procedure before.

So let's not judge punishment procedures before we know what they are. And I'm not saying this to advocate that we should be using punishment. In fact, I keep it strictly positive and proactive with my recommendations, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't learn what punishment procedures are. I want to bring this to light so that you can see how much easier it is to implement positive procedures. Only and to recognize when yourself or other are using reinforcement systems incorrectly. With this knowledge you'll better recognize positive and negative reienforcement and positive and negative punishment for what they are.

I'm excited talking about this because it takes us another step closer to uncomplicating behavior and it empowers you so much to ask really meaningful questions when it comes to implementing reinforcement and being able to recognize when reinforcement is being used appropriately. Because like I said earlier, a lot of plans state that they're using positive reinforcement when it's punishment or they label strategies positive reinforcement when they're actually negative reinforcement. And this is a really important distinction, right? We have a child or student that's engaging in problematic behavior. We need to make sure positive reinforcement is in the picture. If not, we're, we're like, we're losing the battle before we've even begun.

When this happens, I know there are no teams out there that are doing this intentionally. I always say we don't know what we don't know, and that's why I'm excited to get this information out here. So you as a parent, caregiver, or even as a practitioner, you can come to the meeting with some good questions and a solid understanding of what it means to use positive reinforcement.

I want you to be able to question your behaviorist if needed, your IEP team if needed, or whomever is telling you to use an intervention that isn't quite sitting right or isn't quite using positive reinforcement how you understand it. Understanding the use of reinforcement, both positive and negative, will give you that power.

You will leave this episode with a higher understanding of what positive and negative reinforcement is, how it should be used, and most importantly, how to recognize proper and improper use. So, let's dive in.

First, let's start with reinforcement. We reinforce things to make them stronger and that's a pretty general definition, right?

There's nothing special when we think about reinforcing we think about making something stronger. Reinforcement and applied behavior analysis refers to consequences and reactions that strengthen behavior so reinforcement on its own simply refers to whatever is strengthening or increasing the probability that that behavior will occur again.

When I'm assessing or doing an observation, I'm looking for variables in the environment or the reactions of staff that may be reinforcing the behavior and therefore increasing the probability of any future occurrence. So what are we doing after the behavior occurs that may actually reinforce the behavior?

Good or bad, right? These aren't always obvious either. They may be something super subtle like eye contact, proximity, or an unintentional removal or delay in task demand. They may be small, but they are there. So before we get ahead of ourselves, or before I do, let's define positive reinforcement. What is it exactly?

Positive reinforcement occurs when a response is followed by a stimulus and that presentation has resulted in that response occurring more frequently. So we are just looking at this in a very simple two-term contingency. The Book of Applied Behavior Analysis explains positive reinforcement as positive reinforcement has occurred when the response is followed immediately by the presentation of a stimulus and as a result, similar responses occur more frequently in the future. That stimulus that has resulted in an increase in that behavior, that is known as the positive reinforcer, or simply the reinforcer. For a stimulus to be considered a reinforcer, it has to have a proven history of changing behavior.

If the presentation of a stimulus does not change a behavior, it is not a reinforcer. Or if it doesn't change a behavior anymore, It should no longer be considered a reinforcer. So there's some criteria there, right? This is where we get into the fidelity of using positive reinforcement or a positive reinforcer.

I was conducting an assessment a while back, and I was told that the student doesn't connect well to reinforcement and therefore, they couldn't really use any of my ABA stuff. And while that was rude, especially considering they weren't using my ABA stuff correctly, I just thought like, but everybody responds to reinforcement.

So what? So my immediate first question was, what, what are you using as reinforcers? And they told me that the child preferred puzzles and time in the reading corner, reading corner. Well, I don't know about you, but I would not be working hard for a puzzle. And this kid clearly wasn't having it either. And I enjoy puzzles, but I'm not going to work that hard for them.

So another thing to think about is I'm not saying that using puzzles is wrong. I actually worked with an adult woman in a group home setting like years ago, back probably my early twenties. But she had just moved into a group home setting and she loved puzzles. Puzzles were a powerful reinforcer for her, giving her access to varieties of puzzles, doing puzzles with her, earning money to buy puzzles, gluing her puzzles were the only motivation she needed to complete her chores independently and learn her own self care routines.

So finding that reinforcer was actually amazing for her. And it opened her up to learning so many more skills that were needed to be successful in living in that group home situation that she was in. And most importantly, they made her super happy. As you can tell, I really liked her and I enjoyed puzzling with her.

So it was a great pairing, but I don't think puzzles were a high reinforcer for this child. I mean, obviously they weren't, they were having a really hard time getting him to engage in just kind of minimal school ready behaviors, like transitioning, sitting in his seat, following the schedule, orienting his attention.

Long story short, we cannot provide what we think is reinforcing and expect it to motivate someone else. I wouldn't work so hard for cupcakes or goldfish, even though I love those snacks. And also they're not very healthy, so I wouldn't want to be offering those anyways, but I would satiate off of those pretty quickly.

I'd get full. I'd be done with those pretty quickly. And how many goldfish could I eat? How many cupcakes can I eat? before that's not reinforcing or motivating to me anymore. So we have to look at how meaningful the reinforcer is to that individual, not what we perceive as meaningful. There are several classifications of reinforcers that include edible reinforcers, sensory based activities, items, tangible reinforcers like games, technology, fidgets, activity reinforcers and social reinforcers. There are also what we call primary reinforcers and secondary reinforcers. Primary reinforcers are items we need to survive such as food, water, shelter, sleep. Basically our essentials for living. Secondary reinforcers are those reinforcers that have been conditioned. Such as money, tokens, toys, stickers, verbal praise, accessing preferred activities.

Basically these items have a learned or perceived value. So I just wanted to make that distinction really clear because we have in school teams or in behavioral teams or just different groups that you may be working with, they may be using primary reinforcers while maybe the parents don't agree with that that much, or they may be only using secondary reinforcers and they haven't found a meaningful one yet.

So we want to understand the terminology so that we can bring that up as an option for discussion. So the reinforcers aren't really motivating behavior. What secondary reinforcers are you looking at? Or are you using primary reinforcers when a parent isn't really comfortable with that? So you want to make those distinctions really, uh, really clear so that you can take those things to your team so that they can be an open and honest discussion.

One of the first questions I ask, and you should ask too, is what reinforcers are being used to support behavior change and how are they determined? In ABA, we use preference assessments and reinforcer assessments. Preference assessments helps give us a hierarchy of what is most preferred and what is less preferred.

So what do I like most out of these five items? What do I like less out of these five items? And that's important. Well, reinforcer assessments are used to identify how effective the reinforcer was in changing behavior. This is definitely something to bring up to your team or practitioner. If you're worried that the reinforcer in place is not as effective as it should be, or maybe you've seen a drop in motivation.

There are simple and complex ways to do these preference assessments. There are four different types of preference assessments. And if you have never done one, don't know what they are, ask your team or your practitioners how they are conducting these. And if you think an appropriate reinforcer isn't in place, That may be contributing to slow progress, no progress or worsening effects this is definitely a question you want to come to your team with. This is especially true when adverse reactions are happening. When your child has a behavior intervention plans in place, things don't always have to get worse before they get better. So don't just say, okay, they're having a hard time right now.

They may get better. This might be extinction. Um, we want to give them a little bit more time. If it's not going well, let's please ask these questions. What are the reinforcers that they're using? How are they determined? And how immediate are those reinforcers? Let's do some healthy question asking regarding the use of reinforcers.

So I'm gonna say them again. Which reinforcers are being used? How were those reinforcers chosen, and what is the immediacy of that reinforcer? The next thing we wanna look at with positive reinforcement is the immediacy of the reinforcers. The book of Applied Behavior Analysis states emphasizing the importance of the immediacy of the reinforcement is essential. The direct effects of reinforcement involve temporal relations between behavior and its consequences that are on the order of a few seconds. So just a few seconds. That temporal relation is the relationship of time. Timing is everything here. A major reason for this is all the things that can happen in 30 seconds or a minute.

At home or even in, especially in a classroom, a lot can happen. And if we wait too long to reinforce the behavior, we risk accidentally reinforcing the wrong behavior. I have ran into this problem. Honestly, it happens most, not when I'm consulting and able to step in, but mostly when I'm doing an observation and I'm not allowed to intervene or teach.

So it honestly kills me to watch. So here's what happened. Recently, I observed a child respond just... Beautifully a prompt to use this device to request an item. This is what we've been waiting for. The prompt happened. He used his device to navigate the different screens and actually make that request.

It was exactly what we wanted to see. Now, while the staff agreed to his request and they thanked him for using his device, which is great, they did not deliver the item. And while thanking the student and using positive praise statements is nice, it's not going to increase the future probability of his requesting behavior unless he actually gets the item. When the child waited and things moved on and like a minute went by, which doesn't seem like a long time, but it actually is when you've made a request, it was agreed upon you haven't received it. The child pounded his fist on the desk, kind of made this like, like a yell localization. And then the staff said, Oh, yes, yes, that's right. You asked for this item. I'm going to go get it. And I thought, Oh my, they just reinforced the pounding on the table rather than the beautiful request that was made on the device.

Yikes, right? So what do you want to bet that pounding on the table to gain access to their tangible is repeated. I mean, it was reinforced, right? In a clinical setting, we want to reinforce the behavior within seconds. One second, preferably, but that can be difficult depending on the setting. So we want to make sure we are providing the reinforcement pretty quickly because a lot could happen in that 30 seconds to a minute and we want to be sure we are increasing the probability of the correct behavior. I also ran into the problem where staff or parents are so eager to use positive reinforcement and let me tell you, their hearts are in the right place, but they forget that the behavior has to be emitted first. And the student or child gets delivered reinforcement for engaging in no behavior, literally sitting there breathing.

We shouldn't reinforce the absence of a behavior because there's nothing to reinforce. Also, we don't want to use bribery. To your next problem for a token, we want to make sure that contingencies are set, expectations are understood, and the reinforcer follows the behavior in a timely fashion. So I did get a little off track there, but let's move on to negative reinforcement.

What it is and what does it look like? Positive and negative reinforcement have the same exact effect on behavior. So interesting, right? I remember learning that as a young college student and being like no way Because I just had such a different Opinion in my head, it was hard concept for me to grasp, honestly, when I was first learning this.

Um, but positive and negative reinforcement have the same exact effect on behavior. Both negative and positive reinforcement produce an increase in responding. The Book of Applied Behavior Analysis states a negative reinforcement contingency is one in which the occurrence of a response produces the removal, termination, reduction, or postponement of a stimulus which leads to an increase in the future occurrence of that response. Simply put, when a response results in a delay, escape, or postponement, we have negative reinforcement. It's really important to remember that in behavior analysis, Positive and negative are not associated with good or bad. Get that out of your head right now.

There is no good or bad associated with positive and negative. They simply refer to stimulus changes. So when we're talking about negative reinforcement, we are just referring to a response that removes, delays, terminates the presentation of a stimulus. Here are some examples. When we leave early to avoid morning traffic, change our route to avoid congested freeways, Take aspirin to get rid of a headache.

Kids clean their room to avoid their, you know, repetitive directives to do it from mom. And I'm sure most of us have been there. I know I have. Negative reinforcement relies on the presence of an aversive stimuli being presented and the response allows us to stop that experience. So when we know there's a traffic jam, we take an alternate route to avoid or terminate the unpleasant feeling of being in traffic.

With negative reinforcement, we have added something to the environment to reduce, delay, or terminate stimulus or situations. When we see reactive measures that remove stimulus for engaging in preferred behaviors, that's negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement occurs when something non-preferred, uncomfortable, or unpleasant is removed or taken away to increase the probability of a target behavior.

A really good example of this, and something that I've done in my own house, is when we remove tasks from a child's to do list because they have done a good job with something. So, here's an example of that, that I have done in my own house. Hey, you have kept up with your homework and done it all week without complaining. So I'm going to take away your chore list this weekend, no chores this weekend, or you get the weekend off from doing any type of homework. So we're saying you did such a good job with doing this. I'm going to take away this aversive stimuli, you having to do chores on the weekend because you did such a great job doing your homework and we're so responsible all week. That's negative reinforcement when it's done, right? But negative reinforcement can also be used inappropriately. Which may result in the unfavorable behavior patterns. Listen in here, because this happens a lot in schools and at home, and I want you to be able to recognize this.

Again, so you can come to the table with some good questions, and bring some realization to the team. When the child is presented with math work and begins to shout and cry or runs away, the staff member removes the stimulus to calm the student and with the chaos and the ever changing dynamic of the school day, they never got back to finish that math worksheet.

What behavior was reinforced there? So let's walk through that, that contingency again, child screams and runs away when presented with the math worksheet, which results in the delay and the ultimate termination of the task. So by not going back to complete the task, staff have negatively reinforced the behavior of yelling and elopement. We will most likely see the elopement and screaming behavior increase based on the escape it provided from that aversive task or that perceived aversive task. This is really important to recognize when you receive that phone call from a caregiver or school saying that certain behavior situations continue to occur.

My guess is that the behavior is getting negatively reinforced. Student screams with the presentation of a difficult task, demand is removed. So screaming has been negatively reinforced. Screaming was added. Task was taken away. When we are looking to change a behavior, we want to make sure a couple of things.

Number one, that there is an abundance of opportunities for positive reinforcement. The chosen reinforcers are effective, motivating, and most importantly, have a history of positively changing behavior. We also want to look at how often they are being provided reinforcement. What is the immediacy of reinforcement?

Positive and negative reinforcement works to change behavior and seeks to increase behaviors. But we have to do it right. If we want to see the results, we have to get our terminology straight. And we want to make sure that positive reinforcement is being implemented first and foremost. And that it's being used correctly.

Mixing up negative and positive reinforcement with punishment is where plans go wrong. Too often, behavior plans rely on the use of punishment, so removal, and seek to stop behaviors from occurring, rather than focusing on teaching a new skill and using positive reinforcement effectively. So next week I'm covering negative and positive punishment.

I'm excited to share these because the word punishment and negative reinforcement get used interchangeably, and that is not right. And in addition, the use of punishment procedures are not what you think they are. Understanding what punishment both negative and positive are will help you recognize their use and their misuse.

Which in my opinion is most important as it affects behavior change procedures that your team could be using. Learning what they are will help you discuss fidelity with your team and your practitioners. The more you know, the more you can support your home and school team and having an effective, positive interventions in place.

Head over to my website and grab the cheat sheets from this week's topic on negative and positive reinforcement if you think you need them. And I will see you next time. Well, you did it. Another step closer to uncomplicated behavior. I'm so proud of you for taking the time to learn more about behavior analysis, still interested in learning more, or have a question or topic that you'd love some answers to.

Head over to uncomplicated behavior podcast.com for today's show notes, submit a question or topic you would love to hear about, and subscribe to my email and podcast so you never miss a new episode. I created this podcast for you and I want it to serve you well, so don't be afraid to reach out to me directly.