Establishing new behaviours Flashcards
What are the two ways of establishing complex behaviours?
Shaping and chaining
How do we maintain behaviours in different contexts?
Generalisation training
What is shaping?
It differentially reinforces successive approximations towards a target behaviour - it uses differential reinforcement to get closer and closer to a goal behaviour
What does successive approximations mean?
Starting to reinforce behaviours that are closer and closer to the target behaviour
Who coined the term shaping?
Skinner
What are the dimensions of behaviour targeted and what do they mean?
- Topography - form of behaviour
- Frequency - number of responses per unit time.
- Latency - time between onset of the antecedent stimulus and the occurrence of the behaviour
- Duration - total elapsed time for occurrence of the behaviour
What is the shaping procedure?
- Specify the target behaviour
- Selection of the initial behaviour - has to be naturally occuring and happens frequently enough that you can establish within a session
- Selection of the approximations - use of prompts and adequate reinforcers
- Selecting the size of the steps and the time spent on each
What is chaining?
Learning to connect a set of discrete behaviours sequenced in a particular order to form a single behaviour
What is an important aspect of chaining?
Each step in the chain depends on the previous step having occurred correctly - it serves as the discriminative stimulus for the next step
What is task analysis in chaining?
Breaking a complex skill into smaller, individual stimulus-response components
What is forward chaining?
The first step in the chain is teh first training step, then the second, third and so on, until the entire chain has been taught - prompting starts at the first step and until each step is performed independently until the rest of the chain is fully prompted
What is backward chaining?
The last step in the chain is the first training step, and then the second last etc. until the entire chain has been taught - prompting starts at the last step and until each step is performed independently the rest of the chain is fully prompted
What is the difference between shaping and chaining in terms of target behaviour?
Shaping - new behaviour, behaviour normally simple, successive approximations are not part of the final behaviour
Chaining - a new sequence of responses with a cue stimulus signalling the end of each response and the beginning of the next one, behaviour more complex, all the steps in the chain are part of the target behaviour
What are the differences between shaping and chaining in terms of the training procedure?
Shaping - reinforcing behaviours in a structured environment with the opportunity to produce different behaviours, progress is made forward in terms of the natural order of the behaviour, implies reinforcing and extinction of previous approximations
Chaining - implies the linking of stimulus and responses in a structured/semi-structured environment, progress can be forward or backwards, less extinction than shaping due to stimulus control
What is generalisation?
The occurrence of relevant behaviour under different, non-training conditions without the scheduling of the same events in those conditions
