Reinforcement

Reinforcement is the strengthening of a conditioned response by rewarding the target behavior.

Types of reinforcers:   

    Tangible : anything you can touch, monetary rewards and different prizes.

    Social : they can vary but they consist in getting social approval, some examples can be: verbal praise, attention, physical contact. It is easy to use on everyday life and are not very common. In order to use these reinforcements we must take into consideration how other people react for example to physical contact because they may not find it gratifying so the program wont work.

    Environmental : they refer to everything around you, what you can see or smell, the type of chair you seat in, the wall colors, etc.

    Emotional : being recognized as a person by others, feeling included in a group.

Types of reinforcement

     Feedback : provide information about the person’s performance. It refers to knowledge of the results.

          Biofeedback: provide information about different pshysical processes such as blood pressure, heart frequency and muscular tension in order to help the person control such body processes. It is not the strongest method to modify the behavior.

       High probability behaviors : reinforcement to activities with a lower frequency. In order for the low frequency behaviors to increment.

     Chips: Conditioned reinforcers, target behaviors must be specifically explained. High level of effectivity.

Basic requirements:

     •Contingent application of consequences

  •Reinforcement Delay

  •Quantity and magnitude

  •Quality or Type of reinforcer

Reinforcement programs:

Fixed ratio: Reinforce every determined number of responses.

Variable ratio: Give the reinforcement after a variable number of responses.

Fixed interval: After a set period of time we present the reinforcer.

Variable interval: the time of the interval varies and then gives the reinforcer.

Reinforcement techniques to reduce undesirable behaviors:

-Reinforce another behavior: reinforce any other behavior except the undesirable behavior

-Alternative or Incompatible behavior reinforcement

-Functionally equivalent behavior reinforcement

-Low rate response reinforcement

Situational Induction

Situational induction

Instigation techinques

•Procedures based on the control of discriminational stimuli (antecedent) of a behavior in order to promote it, decrease it or eliminate it.

Remember: 

•Situations & social environments affect our behaviors

Situational induction is useful:

•  Expose someone to certain environmental situation that control the target behavior & change or avoid the situations that makes difficult the ocurrence of behavior
• To avoid certain conducts so we can MANIPULATE certain antecedent situational stimuli that affects behavior
•  Present or take  away stimuli that influences behavior
  

  • Note: If deficiens are serious we might use molding and maintenance before reorganizing the situation to reinforce behavior 

  • Remember: Those techniques effects are not permanent, so it is suggested to combine them with other techniques

Application types

 There are four application types of situational induction

A) Environment re-organization:It focuses on modifying by taking away or implementing  stimuli of the environment in order to promote the desired behavior.For example changing the lights, furniture and taking away distractions of the room you are studying in.

B) Transfer behavior to a different place. It focuses on associating a place with a determined behavior to promote ir.For example,it is suggested to choose   one room to study and a different room to sleep.

C) Re-locate people:  It refers to change people of place,like changing the office in order to avoid stress and changing teams.It is also used in couple therapy.

• Remember:: Re-locate can join people.

D) Change time of an activity: It refers to selecting a defined time for a certain activity and promote it during that time.Later the behavior will show at that certain time.For example, when someone has problems sleeping it is reccomended that they sleep always at the same hour and wake up at the same hour so that the body gets conditioned to that specific time of the day and go to sleep.

• Remeber: Certain stimuli and tendencies changes with the pass of time 

How do we apply it? Here are some steps.

1.  Identify the behavior you want to reinforce and wich one to reduce and identify also what stimuli influence the behavior.According to your functional analysis you will know what stimuli influences the appearance or not of the behavior and in what way in order to manipulate them later.
2.  Brainstorm to reorganize environment, people, places,hours, days,events, objects.Situational Induction is a very creative program,think of different ways you can manipulate the environment in order to promote or decrease your target behavior.We suggest you to use your functional analysis.
3. Reintroduce past stimuli that affects behavior. Introduce the stimuli
4. Organize situations and environment in order that the client interact in the planned way with the stimuli, avoid what doesn’t allow such control.Consider that in order to work the stimuli must influence the behavior in the way to want.You must manipulate the situation in order to create the association between the stimuli and behavior.For example, if you want that an employee gets to eat in the cafeteria instead of his office you might put quite music, good light, comfortable chairs and good smells so that he have a good experience in the cafeteria and use it to eat more often.
5.  Reinforce the behavior you want when it appears in the new environment. Remeber that if you reinforce the behavior immediately after it have happened it is more likely that the behavior repeats and therefore the behavior will have a strong association with the stimuli.
6. Apply  fading so that the behavior be under control of pertinent stimuli. Remember to monitor always if the stimuli that you want are been associated with the behavior and in what way.By doing this you will have more control.