Discrimination

vs.

Generalization

• Discrimination:
  • Occurs when a limited spectrum of stimuli occasion a response.
  • Narrow (tight) stimulus control

• Generalization
  • Occurs when a large spectrum of stimuli occasion a certain response.
  • Broad (loose) stimulus control
  • Critical element as to why humane species has survived and thrived.

1. Stimulus Generalization
2. Response Generalization

• Responding to antecedent stimuli sharing a certain aspect of the original S^D; a broadening of the spectrum of stimuli that occasion a certain response

• Individual responds to something in the same way that resembles the original thing from which s/he learned

• Ex: Labeling 'a', 'A', 'a', 'a', as "A".

• The extent to which an individual exhibits novel responses that are functionally equivalent to the trained response.

• The effects of intervention are expanded from the target response to a similar non-targeted response.

• Ex: folding socks into ball, knot, pairs

• Select target behaviors that will meet with natural contingencies for reinforcement 
  • Behavior must be functional for individual.
  • Behaviors that generate reinforcement after intervention is terminated.

• Specify all desired variations of the behavior and the situation in which is should occur after instruction has ended. 
  • List all Behaviors that need to be changed.
  • List all scenarios where Behaviors should/n't occur.

1. Program Common Stimuli
2. Train Loosely
3. Teach Multiple Exemplars
4. Mediation
5. Indiscriminable Contingencies
6. Negative Teaching Examples
7. General Case Analysis

• The process of P.C.S. involves ensuring the same S^D exists in both the instructional and generalization setting.
• The likelihood that the correct response will be occasioned in the generalization setting is increased if there is a lot of similarity between the instructional setting and the generalization setting.

• Ex: Making a purchase- have elements of the store setting in the home / school instructional setting.

• Noncritical elements of the teaching setting are altered in arbitrary ways.

• This decreases the likelihood that an individual too narrowly discriminates some noncritical stimulus, and that the noncritical stimulus acquires exclusive control over the target response.

• Method: Teach in one room one day, another room another day, third room another day, change instructor's appearance. 

• Ex: Asking "How are you?" in a high, medium, or low pitched voice. 

• Provide an individual opportunities to respond correctly to multiple examples of antecedent stimuli.
  • The more, the better.

• Ex: "Bye", "See you later", "Peace out" are all examples of stimuli that have the same meaning and would be responded correctly to in the same way.

• Instruct others (e.g., parents, teachers, siblings, employers) who will help maintain and generalize the newly acquired behavior.

• It is your ethical responsible to collaborate with others to maintain client's progress after terminating intervention.

• Ex: After teaching the skill of greeting in school, ensure that the skill is practiced at home, and work with family and co-workers.

• Contingencies in which the individual is NOT able to DISCRIMINATE wether or not a response will be reinforced.
  • Behaviors continue at a high rate, because the individual does no know when behavior will produce reinforcement.

• Method:

1. Intermittent Schedules of Reinforcement
2. Delayed Reward

• Instructing individuals regarding settings, times, conditions in which behavior is NOT appropriate.
  • Strengthen discrimination skills

• Ex: It is OK to tell inappropriate jokes with fiends. It is NOT OK too tell inappropriate jokes at work.

• Ensuring you are teaching all the different stimulus and response variations the individual may encounter in generalization / post-intervention environment.
• Helps individual learn similarities and differences of stimuli in the same stimulus class. 

• Ex: Teaching an individual to do laundry- Teach the individual to do laundry on multiple laundry machines.

• Assess the availability of natural contingencies of reinforcement.
• Attempt to reduce the need for generalization.
• Probe for generalization before, during, and after intervention.
• Mediators should have responsibility in generalization process

• Extent to which a particular response remains in an individual's repertoire over time following the termination of intervention.

• Ex: An individual who learns to ride a bike in childhood will be able to ride a bike in adulthood, even though he may not have ridden a bike since childhood.

• Use intermittent / variable schedules of reinforcement
• Progress towards naturally occurring reinforcement
• Choosing applied behavior targets

• Behavior that is reinforced through mediation of another person's behavior.

• Behavior that helps a person acquire what they want, and avoid what they do not want.
• Verbal behavior is defined by the function of the response, not the topography.
• Includes vocal and non-vocal behavior.
• Involves social interaction between a speaker and a listener.

• Form: Formal properties of language involve their topographies (e.g., verbs, nouns, prepositions).

• Function: Effects of the response.

• The unit of analysis in verbal behavior (e.g., mand, tact, echoic, intraverbal, textual, transcription)

• A set of verbal operants emitted by an individual

6 Types of Verbal Operants

EMITTT

1. Echoic
2. Mand
3. Intraverbal
4. Tact
5. Textual
6. Transcription

• A verbal operant involving a verbal response evoked by vocal verbal S^D that has formal similarity between the auditory verbal stimulus S^D and the auditory vocal response, and a history of generalized conditioned reinforcement.

• Whatever the speaker says controls what the listener is going to say.
• Formal Similarity & Point to Point Correspondence

• Bringing the verbal responses under the functional control of verbal S^D that have point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the response.
• Goal: To enable the speaker to repeat your sounds. The final goal is to transfer the response form to other, more advanced verbal operants.
• Shaping: Teacher presents vocal verbal stimulus and reinforces the individual's successive approximations towards the sample. 

• Verbal operant involving a response of any kind that is evoked by an MO and maintained by specific reinforcer.
• Occurs due to deprivation or aversive stimulation
• First verbal operant acquired by humans

• Involves bringing verbal responses under the functional control of MOs.

1. Assess motivation (MO need to be in effect)
2. List potential motivators & reinforcers
3. Teach words related to motivation

1. Regular Mands: Mand that can actually be reinforced
2. Extended Mands: Emitting mands to objects or animals that cannot possibly supply an appropriate reinforcing response.

1. Superstitious Mand: A mand in which reinforcement sometimes occurs incidentally.
   • Ex: car sometimes does/n't start. Starts after you say "come on, start!"
2. Magical Mand: A mand in which reinforcement has never occurred in the past. 
   • Ex: "Jameson, it's your turn to cook dinner"

• A verbal operant involving a response that is evoked by a verbal S^D that does not have point-to-point correspondence between the antecedent verbal stimulus and the product of the verbal response.
• Allows people to talk about things that are not physically present. 
• Produces generalized conditioned reinforcement

• Involves bringing verbal responses under the functional control of verbal S^Ds that lack point-to-point correspondence with the response.
• Teach using prompting, fading, and chaining, fill in the blank.
• Teach in natural environment to increase generalization.

• Verbal operant involving a response that is evoked by nonverbal S^D and reinforced by generalized conditioned reinforcement.
• Labeling the environment when the object, event, stimulus is PRESENT IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT.

• Bringing a verbal response under the functional control of nonverbal S^D.
•  Ultimate goal is the individual can tact without anything in place but a nonverbal S^D (i.e., without instructor asking "what is that?").

• There are many ways to describe the same thing.
• A  new stimulus being similar to a known stimulus may evoke a response like the original stimulus. 

1. Solistic
2. Metaphorical
3. Metonymical
4. Generic

• Poor use of language
• Substandard verbal behavior; slang

• Ex: "You speak good" instead of "You speak well"

• Metaphors
• A novel stimulus shares some, but not all the features associated with the original stimulus.

• Ex: "That M&M is delicious as pie." "His heart is as black as coal."

• Verbal responses to novel stimuli that SHARE NONE of the relevant features of the original stimulus, but some irrelevant yet unrelated feature has acquired stimulus control.

• Ex: Saying "water" when being shown an empty cup.

• The novel stimulus shares all of the relevant or defining features of the original stimulus.
• Stimulus generalization

• Ex: Saying "The Blue Kangaroo is closed" when looking at a DnD store-closure sign.

• A verbal S^D with point-to-point correspondence but no formal similarity between the stimulus and the response, and produces generalized conditioned reinforcement.
• Reading without any implications that the reader understands what is being read.
• READING WRITTEN WORDS
• Actually understanding what one is reading involves other verbal and non-verbal operants, such as intraverbal behavior and receptive language

• A verbal S^D that controls a written, typed, or finger spelled response.
• Point-to-point correspondence and no formal similarity
• Taking dictation
• Writing and spelling words spoken to you.

• Ex: Hearing someone say "pillow" and spelling p-i-l-l-o-w  

1. Verbal S^D: The response form in controlled by a verbal stimulus.
2. Point-to-point Correspondence
3. NO Formal similarity

• Textual
• Transcription [hear-write]
• Taking dictation

Duplic

[Mimetic]

1. Verbal S^D The response form in controlled by a verbal stimulus.
2. Point-to-point Correspondence
3. Formal similarity

• Echoic 
• Transcription- [see-write]

• The role of the listener and what you need to teach them to do.
  • Plays role of mediator of reinforcement for speaker's behavior
  • Acts as an S^D for speaker's behavior
• Understanding: A certain type of listener behavior in which the listener provides a non-verbal response to a verbal S^D, (i.e., receptive language)

• Verbal behavior about one's own verbal behavior.
• A verbal operant  in which some aspect of a speaker's own VB functions as an S^D or an MO for additional speaker VB.

Schedules of Reinforcement

FR, VR, FI, VI

• A rule that describes a contingency of reinforcement
• The environmental arrangements that determine conditions by which behaviors will be reinforced. 

1. Fixed Ratio
2. Variable Ratio
3. Fixed Interval
4. Variable Interval

Continuous Reinforcement

(CRF)

• Reinforcement is provided for every occurrence of the large behavior. 
• Used for strengthening novel behavior.

Intermittent Schedules of Reinforcement

(INT)

• Some but not all occurrences of target behavior are reinforced
• Used for maintaining behaviors that have already been established.
• Helps fade from artificial to natural contingencies of reinforcement.

1. Fixed Ratio
2. Variable Ratio
3. Fixed Interval
4. Variable Interval

• Reinforcement follows a fixed number of responses.
• High rate of responding
• Post reinforcement pause
• Break and Run [step] pattern __/^---
• Size of ratio influences duration of postreinforcement pause; long ratio = long pause & short ratio = short pause

Keys:

1. High rate of responding
2. Postreinforcement pause

• The STRONGEST schedule of INT reinforcement
• Reinforcement follows an  AVERAGE number of correct responses.
• Consistent steady rates of responding
• No postreinforcement pause
• Steep slopes
• 80º Angle

Keys:

1. High rate of responding
2. No postreinforcement pause

• Reinforcement follows the first correct response after a set amount of time has elapsed since the last correct response.
• Constant criteria for reinforcement does not change over time. 
• Slow to moderate rate of responding.
• Larger interval = longer postreinforcement pause.
• FI → FIsh → SCALLOPED slope

Keys:

1. Postreinforcement pause
2. Increase in responding before S^R

• Reinforcement is delivered after the first correct response after an averaged amount of time has elapsed.
• Constant stable rate of responding.
• No postreinforcement pause - few hesitations between responses.
• Steady slope.
• 45º Angle

Keys:

1. Steady rate of responding
2. No postreinforcement pause

Thinning Intermittent Reinforcement

(AKA: Schedule Thinning)

• Gradually increasing the response ratio or the duration of the time interval.

• The result of an abrupt increase in requirements when moving from a denser to a thinner schedule of reinforcement.
• Increase in avoidance, aggressions etc.

• A restriction placed on an interval schedule requiring that the primed response must occur within a specified amount of time to be eligible for reinforcement. 
• Used to speed up response rate.

• Ex: FR5 LH2= Must complete 5 correct responses within 2 minutes to be eligible for S^R.

• Differential Schedules of Reinforcement: Use when challenging behavior has to do with rates of response (i.e., too much / not enough)
  • Reinforcement is contingent upon behaviors occurring at higher or lower rates than the specified criterion.

1. DRH
2. DRD
3. DRL

Differential Reinforcement of Higher Rates of Responding

(DRH)

• Schedule of reinforcement that provides S^R for emitting behaviors that are at or above a pre-established rate.
• Helps INCREASE behavior displayed too infrequently.

Differential Reinforcement of Diminished Rates of Responding

(DRD)

• Provides reinforcement when the number of responses in a specified time period is ≤ to a prescribed limit.
• Behavior is allowed to occur to a certain point and still access reinforcement.
• Helps DECREASE behavior displayed too often.
• Does not eliminate behavior entirely.

Differential Reinforcement of Low Rates of Responding

(DRL)

• Provides reinforcement only if the behavior occurs following a specific period of time during which it did not occur or since the last time it occurred.
• Behavior cannot occur during specified period of time.
• IRT identifies duration of time that occurs between two responses.
• Longer IRT = lower rate → increasing IRT = Lower rates
• Helps DECREASE behaviors displayed too often.
• Does not eliminate behavior entirely.

• Systematically thins each successive reinforcement opportunity independent of the participant's behavior.

• Using for S^R Assessment: Procedure for identifying which S^R will maintain treatment effects across thinned schedules of reinforcement. Comparing 'breaking points' when individual stopped responding→ identifies stronger S^R options.
• Using for Intervention: Systematically increase the requirements for reinforcement. Used to measure strength, potency, or effectiveness of reinforcement schedules.

1. Concurrent 
2. Multiple
3. Chained
4. Mixed
5. Tandem
6. Alternative
7. Conjunctive

• Concurrent- ONLY schedule that involves two or more behaviors
• Multiple & Mixed- Same schedule except the S^Ds
• Chained & Tandem- Same schedules except for S^Ds
• Alternative & Conjunction- Same schedules except one includes EITHER/OR and one includes BOTH contingency requirements.

• Occurs when two or more contingencies of reinforcement operate independently and simultaneously for 2 or more behaviors.
• Choice making
• Matching Law is part of this schedule

• Ex: High-school client likes to eat alone at lunch. but you are attempting to have him interact with peers during lunch. Use a concurrent FR1 FI7 schedules. 

FR1 sitting with others earns 3 hours of video game time

FI7 sitting alone earns 30 minutes of video game time

CHOOSES FR1 to earn more video game time

• Given two concurrently available behaviors, we will choose to engage in the behavior that has the more dense schedule of reinforcement.
• A description of a phenomenon according to which organisms MATCH their responses according to the proportion of payoff during CHOICE situations.

• Presents two or more basic schedules of reinforcement in an alternating, usually random, sequence for only one or more behaviors.
• The basic schedules within the multiple schedule occur successively and independently
• An S^D is correlated with each basic schedule and is present as long as the schedule is in effect.

• Ex: At school once a week, and at home twice a week my teacher or tutor provides reinforcement for completing homework. Teacher VR5. Tutor VI2. I know what the schedules of reinforcement is based on S^Ds of teacher vs. tutor.

• Has two or more basic schedules of reinforcement that occur successively and has an S^D correlated with each independent schedule with one or more behaviors. 

3 Keys:

1. Basic schedules occur in a specific order (not in random order like Multiple schedule)
2. The behavior may be the same for entire chain, or different for different elements of the chain. 
3. Conditioned reinforcement for the first behavior in the chain is the presentation of the second element and so on.

• Ex: Behavior chain of getting gas in your car (FR15) must be completed AFTER 10 minutes (FI10).

• Presents two or more basic schedules of reinforcement in an alternating, usually random, sequence for only or more behaviors.
• The basic schedules within the multiple schedule occur successively and independently
• Has NO S^D correlated with the independent schedules.

• Ex: mix FR10 FI1 schedule: Reinforcement sometimes occurs after the completion of 10 responses, and sometimes occurs after one minute from the preceding reinforcement. There is not S^D the individual has no idea which schedule is in effect. 

• Has two or more basic schedules of reinforcement that occur successively but has NO S^D correlated with each independent schedule with one or more behaviors. 

3 Keys:

1. Basic schedules occur in a specific order (not in random order like Multiple schedule)
2. The behavior may be the same for entire chain, or different for different elements of the chain. 
3. Conditioned reinforcement for the first behavior in the chain is the presentation of the second element and so on.

• Only difference between Chained and Tandem is the presence of an S^D; Present for Chained, NOT PRESENT for Tandem

• Provides reinforcement when the requirement of EITHER a ratio  OR interval schedule is met, regardless of which of the components schedule requirements is met first.

• Ex: FR50 / FI5: Reinforcement is provided whenever 50 correct responses have occurred, or after first correct response after 5 minutes has elapsed. 

• Provides reinforcement after BOTH requirements of the reinforcement schedule have been met.

• Ex: FR50 FI2: Reinforcement is provided after 50 correct responses AND 2 minutes has elapsed. 

• Behaviors that are brought about by schedules of reinforcement during times when reinforcement is unlikely to be delivered.
• Time-filling or interim behaviors (e.g., doodling, smoking, drinking, etc.)

• All the reinforcement schedules also apply to punishment.

Ex: Suppressive effects of a punisher are maximized by a continuous schedule of punishment in which each occurrence of the behavior is followed by the punishing consequence.