Exam 1 - Textbook

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Behavior Modification & Its Key Characteristics

Behavior Modification - approach to the assessment, evaluation, and alteration of behavior

• development of adaptive, prosocial behavior and reduction of maladaptive behavior in everyday life

• sometimes considered a specific form of intervention, but there are many techniques

• can be broadly conceived broadly as a scientific approach to understanding and changing human behavior

• areas where applied:

  • education

    • virtually all settings (preschool-grad school)

    • learning & remediation, regular & special education

  • treatment of psychiatric dysfunction

  • social, emotional, behavioral problems

    • used to treat anxiety, depression, substance abuse, child and spouse abuse, marital discord, and sexual deviance and dysfunction, child rearing, medicine and health,

      sports, the military, rehabilitation, and care of the elderly

Key Characteristics

Emphasis on Behavior

• special emphasis to actions & performance, everyday life

• focus or problem is defined in terms of overt behavior

  • often one can intervene effectively on behavior and influence thoughts and feelings

  • in everyday situations, overt behavior is often a primary concern that prompts the need to intervene

  • evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention is facilitated by being able to translate problems into observable behaviors

• but, human functioning entails more than just what people do, feelings & thoughts are important too

• Often behavior change is an end in itself, as in situations

  where one wants to reduce criminal behavior and increase social interaction. In

  other situations, behavior change is included in treatment as a means to an end;

  changing behavior can help change how people feel and how they perceive the

  environment

• a prevailing assumption has been that changing how people feel and what they think and know will change behavior - but changing what people do often leads to changes in how they feel and what they think as well

Emphasis on Current Determinants of Behavior

• focuses on efforts to understand the causes of behavior and factors that relate to how individuals function and perform in everyday life

• useful to distinguish past from present causes or sources of influence

• are there causes we can identify in the current environment?

• behavior modification emphasizes current influences on behavior and how they can be mobilized to effect changes.

Emphasis on Learning Experiences to Promote Change

• assumption of behavior modification is that behavior can be altered by providing new learning experiences

• behavioral treatments provide special learning experiences to decrease deviant or maladaptive behavior, increase adaptive skills and prosocial behavior in everyday life

• learning experiences draw on scientific research on the ways to develop, eliminate, and promote behavior

  • much more systematic than learning in everyday life

  • practice must be accompanied by other systematic experiences (instruction, feedback, and gradual progress in developing increasingly complex skills) depending on the skill

  • without accompaniments, practice can lock in bad habits and poor performance

• research on how to develop, change, increase, reduce, eliminate behavior; different types of learning & the conditions in which learning takes place

• behavior-change programs rely on many learning concepts and findings developed in research

• research has established that very specific arrangements may be needed to ensure that learning takes place and that performance is consistent

• Diverse biological, behavioral, social, cultural, and other factors influence the development of behavior and also may be quite relevant to behavior change

• key feature of BM is the plasticity of behavior or amenability of behavior to change when systematic learning experiences are provided

Assessment & Evaluation

• assessment - systematically measuring current functioning of the domain or problem that is to be altered

  • info descriptive - conveying what performance is before, during, after intervention

  • typically begins by clarifying goals of intervention

  • central to identifying the extent and nature of the behavior

  • sometimes focuses on what happens before or after the behavior to be translated into an intervention

  • as intervention occurs, assessment continues to see if change occurs and if desired outcomes are achieved

• evaluation - occurs before assessment, determines what the problem or goal is, how the client and others are affected by it, and the circumstances under which it emerges

  • drawing conclusions or inferences about whether change has occurred and whether the intervention is responsible for change

  • identify relations or why performance has changed

• goals usually expressed in concrete terms or behaviors that can be measured

  • direct observation

  • evaluations by significant others

  • evaluations by the client themselves

Application

• interventions often implemented in everyday life and settings

  • day-care centers

  • schools

  • home

  • hospitals

  • business

• persons in charge or care, management, and education of clients often implement the behavior-change programs (parents, teachers, relatives, spouses, peers, colleagues) - called paraprofessionals

Models of Learning as Underpinnings of Behavior Modification

• Classical Conditioning

  • Pavlov’s Dogs - you know it, also UCS, UCR, CS, CR

  • concepts of conditioning from Pavlov extended to explain virtually all learning - language, acquisition of knowledge, development of deviant and maladaptive behavior

    • concepts were overextended - did not give accurate or complete accounts of these areas

    • conditioning is more complex than originally thought

  • Pavlov’s significant contribution - systematic investigation of learning, clear demonstration of process of learning under well-controlled conditions helped foster more elaborate studies of different kinds of learning

    • also method of experiments - careful observation & quantification

• Operant Conditioning

  • Thorndike - learning of new behaviors rather than new connections of reflex behavior

    • puzzle-box experiment with cats

      • hungry cat placed in box & recorded time it took to escape

      • food placed outside of box for incentive

      • cat tried to escape by trial and error, different solutions until one worked & cat gets out

      • cat then placed in box again to do it again

      • less and less time to get out as cat does it again and again

    • formulated laws or principles of behavior

      • law of effect - consequences that follow behavior help learning

  • Skinner - impact of various consequences on behavior

    • helped clarify learning that resulted from consequences and its differences from from the classical conditioning studied by pavlov

    • many behaviors are emitted spontaneously and are controlled primarily by their consequences

    • operants - behaviors that are responses that operated (had some influence) on the environment

      • strengthened or weakened as a function of the events that follow them

      • reading, walking, working, talking, nodding one’s head, smiling

    • respondents - reflex responses controlled by eliciting stimuli

    • method is significant

      • a focus on overt behavior

      • assessment of the frequency of behavior over time

      • the study of one or a few organisms at a time

Modeling and Observational Learning

• individual observes another person (aka model) engage in a particular behavior

• observer sees model perform the behavior, but does not engage in overt responses or receive any consequences, learns merely by watching model

• observer learns the responses or behaviors by observing - accomplished through mental representations or cognitive processes

• no overt behavior required on the part of the recipient of a modeling experience to learn

• whether a learned response is actually performed can depend on consequences or incentives

• bandura study - aggression

• The extent to which modeling stimuli influence learning and performance also depends on other factors:

  • the similarity of the model to the observer

  • the prestige, status, and expertise of the model

  • the number of models observed

Rational Behaviorism

• learning & performance of novel responses that have not been directly trained

• responses neither respondents nor operants, rather reflect an integration of what’s been learned through the processes and other learning to produce a new response/application

• emergents - behaviors that are considered to be instincts

  • emergents are those acts that derive from cognitive processes, acquired concepts, insights, and novel applications beyond specific behaviors that have been learned

  • generated by integrative processes

  • key characteristics

    • come as unanticipated “surprise” to the researcher

    • reflect novel response patterns & solutions to problem

    • form covertly through internal processes, hence unobtrusively or silently

    • reflect new behaviors that have no specific reinforcement history

    • usually cannot be graphed or charted because they reflect a unique response

    • entail the syntheses of individually acquired responses and experiences

    • are not subject to specific stimulus control as are respondents and oeprants

    • frequently reflect rearing conditions, early experience, and training

    • tend to be associated with brain complexity (as per species and maturation)

  • Even the most mundane activities may require problem solving and use of many skills but they are “packaged” or integrated in novel ways.

• animal intelligence - the many ways in which animals can acquire and use concepts to respond to their environments

• There has been no direct role of rational behaviorism in generating specific treatment techniques in behavior modification, emerged relatively recently

Development of Behaviorism

• late 1800s early 1900s - broader orientation based on Pavlov, Thorndike, Skinner

• increased interest in scientific method

• Darwin

  • On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

  • The Descent of Man

  • theory of evolution - scientific explanation of development of species

  • continuity - the view that human and non-human animals were part of an ongoing evolutionary process, subject to similar influences, and principles such as natural selection & survival of the fittest

• animal research - part of larger movement toward more scientific approach to study of behavior

  • investigations in lab, careful control over experiments, documentation & collection of data

• John B. Watson - behaviorism: animal psychology & applying methods from animal research to study of human behavior, neither objective nor subjective

Extensions to Clinical Work & Applied Settings

• Classical and operant conditioning were used increasingly as a basis for conceptualizing child development; education; language; development of social, emotional, and behavior problems; and behavior change

  • develop new techniques to treat children and adults for psychological and behavioral problems

  • modeling also helped with developing interventions

• Wolpe - systematic desensitization

  • cats - exposure to a series of anxiety-provoking situations while engaging in competing responses would gradually overcome the anxiety

• Operant Conditioning

  • role of consequences on behavior

  • through record history, rewards used to promote behaviors that culture wished to foster

    • ancient roman & chinese soldiers, Axtec & Plains Indians of the Americas got rewards for bravery and success in battle

      • permitting heroes to have statues mad of themselves or relate their experiences to the public

  • laboratory studies were conducted with hospitalized patients with psychoses who performed on various apparatus daily to earn small rewards (e.g., money, pictures)

    • Performance on the laboratory apparatus was often interrupted by pauses in which psychotic symptoms (such as vocal hallucinatory behaviors) could be observed

    • One could see graphically when these pauses took place because responses on the apparatus did not occur

      • operant conditioning methods might be an objective way to study psychotic behaviors (e.g., when hallucinations occurred, their regularity, patterns).

    • responding to laboratory tasks appeared to result in a reduction of symptoms (e.g., staring into space) both in the laboratory and on the hospital ward

      • symptoms might be altered in important ways by increases in operant responding

  • depressed adult patient who complained of sleeping difficulties and reported pains in her back, chest, head, and shoulders - no physical problems

    • perhaps these bodily complaints were influenced or maintained by their consequences - operants (behaviors that operated in the environment and were maintained by consequences)

    • observations - daily frequency of complains for several days

    • staff instructed to ignore complaints instead of typical consolation/sympathy/attention

    • after some days, revert to previous ways of responding, after some days staff withdraw attention

    • The frequency of complaints changed dramatically as staff behavior changed. These results suggested that attention and consequences from others can greatly influence patient behavior.

  • preschool class, 4 year old Ann, tended to not interact with other kids

    • observation - interactions with an adult or peers

    • no change in teacher behavior vs when teacher praised group when Ann interacted with them, if Ann left group - teacher turned away from her

    • social interaction in a school setting was influenced by attention and consequences from the teacher

• Modeling

  • Peter, afraid of rabbit and other furry objects

    • placed in play situation with other children where rabbit was present

    • other children interacted with rabbit in non-anxious fashion

    • peter touched rabbit immediately after observing others touch it, overcame fear

    • however, other procedures also used as well - could be a combo of modeling with others

    • modeling typically included with other procedures

Contemporary Behavior Modification

• Current behavior modification can be characterized by expansion and integration of techniques and domains of functioning beyond those emphasized in the historical roots I have traced.

• many factors and many different interventions are unified. The way to unify them is represented by different terms and phases including behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, and more generally to evidence-based interventions.

• Most domains of human functioning incorporate more than just behavior. Affect (emotion) and cognition (thoughts, beliefs, and other mental processes) typically are involved as well.

• parallel movement of identifying and utilizing interventions that are evidence-based

Applied Behavior Analysis

• Methodology includes assessment, experimental design (arrangements of the situation to evaluate effectiveness), and data evaluation.

• Basic laboratory research on operant learning and the methodology to study this together form an area referred to as the experimental analysis of behavior

  • extending both the principles and methods of operant conditioning to behaviors that make a difference in everyday life

• Intervention programs based on operantconditioning principles and techniques have been implemented in schools, daycare centers, the home, hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities, business and industry, the military, and society at large

• Characteristics

  • focus on overt behaviors

  • focus on behaviors of applied (social or clinical) significance

  • focus on one or a small number of individuals over time

  • assess behavior through direct observation, as in counting the frequency of responses

  • assess behavior continuously over time to identify stable patterns of performance under various conditiongs

  • search for current causes or factors that may be maintaining the behavior

  • use of environmental events to influence the frequency of behavior

  • identify, evaluate, and demonstrate the factors (antecedents, consequences) that are responsible for behavior change

  • search for marked intervention effects that make a clear difference in the everyday functioning of the individual

Chapter 2 - Principles of Operant Conditioning

pg 58 - 94

Contingencies: ABCs of Behavior

• contingencies of reinforcement - relationships between behaviors & environmental events that influence behavior

  • antecedents (A)

    • stimuli, settings, contexts that occur before and influences behaviors

  • behaviors (B)

    • acts themselves, what individuals do or don’t do

  • consequences (C)

    • events that follow behavior and may include influences that increase/decrease/have no impact on what individual does

  • ABCs more complex than 1 antecedent, 1 behavior, 1 consequence

  • the context or circumstances form part of the antecedent events and may change how we respond

• developing effective programs depends on understanding the influences of antecedents and consequences - how they can be used to promote, develop, maintain behavior

• behavioral interventions - sometimes view that casual efforts to apply minute aspects of the approach can be effective… NO

  • need familiar procedures used in unfamiliar ways to change behavior

Antecedents of Behavior

• 3 types - prompts, setting events, discriminative stimuli

• Prompts

  • specific antecedents that directly facilitate and guide performance of specific behaviors

  • designed to help generate a specific response

  • common types:

    • verbal instructions

    • written or physical cues

    • gestures

    • physical or manual guidance

    • modeling

  • types can be used alone or in combination

  • play a major role in developing a behavior

    • can show the person what to do, how to do it, when to do it

    • used to generate a behavior to therefore be reinforced or to help refine the behavior/add to complexity

  • verbal prompts = most frequent type

    • seatbelts in Spain: drivers in Spain received verbal prompts in parking lots to buckle up for safety and to prevent accidents

      • increase rates of using seat belts

    • seatbelts in grocery stores: verbal prompt was used as parents with young children entered the store to begin their shopping

      • greeter said “Have a nice day, and don’t forget to buckle up.”

      • buckling up greatly increased the use of seat belts in shopping carts

  • combination of prompts

    • develop imitation among children with Autism; modeling was used by having a trainer model a facial expression; if the child was not paying attention, a verbal prompt was added (“Do this”). When the child did, praise was added to reinforce imitation.

  • long-term goal: develop behavior so it’s performed without prompts eventually

  • fading - gradual removing of a prompt

    • if prompt removed early in training, response may no longer be performed

    • if response is performed consistently with a prompt, the prompt can be progressively reduced and finally omitted

  • prompting can also help refine the behavior

    • people forgetting to take birth control pills - use alarm, vibrating necklaces, phone apps

• Setting Events

  • contextual factors or conditions that influence behavior

  • broad in scope and set stage for behaviors and consequences

  • includes features of the situation, features of the task or demands presented to the individual, conditions within the individual, behaviors of others

  • external or environmental events (home, school, restaurant, behavior of others in the setting) and internal states (feeling irritable, good or bad sleep, hungry, thirsty, lonely)

  • establishing operation - antecedent variable or factor that temporarily increases the effectiveness of some other event or consequence and the likely behaviors associated with those events

    • alter effectiveness of consequences in the environment

    • influence the frequency of behaviors that can obtain these consequences

    • motivational states, emotions, environmental events can be examples

  • abolishing operation - antecedents that decrease the effectiveness of some other event or consequence and the likely behaviors associated with those events

  • Example: if you are using food as reinforcement, deprivation is an establishing operation and satiation is an abolishing operation

  • setting events do not have to be something we can identify or something that we’re aware of

  • priming - presenting cues to people and then having them engage in some subsequent task or activity

    • out of conscious awareness but impacts people’s decisions, views, actual behaviors

    • incidental objects that are made visible or smells

  • social norming - messages based on social norms to convey what other people have done are more effective than the usual non-normative appeal (not “save the environment”, but “most/86% of guests reuse towels”)

  • setting events can be difficult to identify in everyday life because they do not necessarily occur immediately before behavior

High-Probability Requests

• a way of presenting a prompt asking another person to do something in a special way that increases the likelihood that the person will comply with a request

• Parent often ask their kids to do different kinds of tasks - clear dinner table, get ready for dinner, do homework, turn off computer

  • parent likely to say the child does/does not comply as a whole based on their compliance

  • context and how the instruction is provided influence whether the child complies or not (harshly, warmly, etc)

• continuum of likelihood that person complies, easier to use categories

  • high-probability requests - individual is very likely to carry out

  • low-probability requests - individual is very unlikely to carry out

  • if you follow high-prob. w/ low-prob. then the individual is more likely to comply with low-prob.

• behavioral momentum - tendency for the behavior to persist, acts as a metaphor for referring to the effects of high-prob. requests

Discriminative Stimuli & Stimulus Control

• stimuli often become associated with various consequences, once associations occur - stimuli exert control over behavior

• differential reinforcement - reinforcing a response in the presence of one stimulus/situation and not reinforcing the same response in the presence of another stimulus/situation

  • each stimulus signals the consequences that are likely to follow

  • a stimulus whose presence has been associated with reinforcement is referred to as a discriminative stimulus (S^D)

    • stranger with happy, friendly face - increase likelihood we smile back

  • a stimulus whose presence has been associated with non-reinforcement is referred to as a non-discriminative stimulus (S^A or S delta)

    • stranger with grumpy face - decrease likelihood we smile back

  • eventually the reinforced response is likely to occur in the presence of the S^D, unlikely to occur in the presence of the S^A

  • behavior is under stimulus control - presence of a stimulus increases the likelihood of a response

Behaviors

• target behaviors - behaviors one wishes to develop

  • goal = get behaviors to occur & then provide consequences (reinforcement)

• reinforced practice - mixes consequences (reinforced) with behavior (practice); repeated trials or performance of the behavior followed by reinforcing consequences

  • performing a behavior one time is not sufficient to develop a skill or habit, repeated performance is usually the critical component and one that also can lock the behavior in a person’s repertoire and indeed change the brain

• shaping - reinforcement of successive approximations of the final response

  • responses are reinforced that either resemble the final response or include components of that response

  • responses increasingly similar to final goal are reinforced, and they increase; responses dissimilar to final goal are not reinforced so they drop out and extinguish

  • the goal is to attain a final behavior and the behaviors along the way drop out or are replaced by behaviors that are closer and closer to the goal

• chaining - sequence of responses, developing the sequence of behaviors, occurs by reinforcing completion of the full sequence of behaviors

  • forward chaining - developing behaviors in the order in which they are performed

    • different from shaping - steps to behavior are not replaced as you go, there are multiple behaviors in a sequences that are all still there at the end of training

  • backward chaining - starting with the last behavior in the sequence

    • train last behavior first then work backwards

    • requires important discussion of how behaviors in a sequence relate to each other and to the consequences that follow at the end of a sequence

    • an event immediately preceding reinforcement becomes a signal for reinforcement

  • interest is not merely in increasing this or that behavior but rather in building sequences of behaviors

Consequences of Behavior

• for a consequence to alter a particular behavior, it must be dependent or contingent upon the occurrence of that behavior

  • behavior change occurs when certain consequences are contingent upon performance

• consequence = contingent when it is delivered only after the target behavior has been performed and is otherwise not available

• noncontingent delivery of consequences ordinarily does not result in systematic changes in target behavior because the consequences do not consistently follow that behavior (there are exceptions)

• Positive Reinforcement

  • reinforcement - increase in probability or likelihood of a response when immediately followed by consequences

  • positive reinforcers - stimuli or events presented after a response has been performed that increase the frequency of the behavior they follow, positive = something is presented or added

    • typically called a reward

    • defined by its effect on behavior

  • negative reinforcers (aversive events or stimuli) - events removed after a response has been performed that increase the behavior proceeding their removal, negative = something is removed or withdrawn

  • any event that does not increase the behavior it follows is not a positive reinforcer

  • rewards are defined merely as something that is given or received in return for doing something - do not necessarily increase the probability of the behaviors they follow

    • a person may be unaware of or not consider as rewards many events that are reinforcers - “stop that!” or taking someone out of the room to isolate them

    • key point is that a reward is not synonymous with a positive reinforcer

• types of positive reinforcers

  • unconditioned or primary reinforcers

    • may not be reinforcing all the time, but when it does, its value is automatic (unlearned) and does not rely on previous association with any other reinforcers

    • food or water - won’t reinforce if someone just finished a large meal or glass of water

  • conditioned or secondary reinforcers

    • acquire reinforcing value through learning, by pairing with events that are already reinforcing

    • praise, grades, money, completion of a goal

    • if a neutral stimulus is repeatedly presented before or along with another reinforcing stimulus, the neutral stimulus becomes a reinforcer

  • some conditioned reinforcers are paired with many different reinforcers

    • when a conditioned reinforcer is paired or associated with many other reinforcers, it is referred to as a generalized conditioned reinforcer

      • extremely effective - paired with variety of events

  • intervention programs frequently use tokens as generalized reinforcers to change behavior - poker chips, coins, tickets, stars, points, check marks; exchanged for many other events that are reinforcing

• negative reinforcement

  • increase in the likelihood of a response by removing an aversive event immediately after the response has been performed

  • event is a negative reinforcer only if its removal after a response increases performance of that response

  • whether a consequence really serves as a negative reinforcer can only be determined by seeing if the consequence can change behavior

  • requires an ongoing aversive event or stimulus that can be removed or terminated after a specific response has been performed

  • punishment trap - negative reinforcement can lock in behavior in a parent, teacher, other punishing agent

    • child may engage in some misbehavior - aversive to parent

    • parent shouts, screams, hits child

    • usually - immediate termination of aversive child behavior

    • momentary suppression of behavior is the only benefit that occurs but its effects on the parent are powerful

    • parent trapped in their behavior as well

  • avoidance - behavior is performed before negative event even occurs

    • cues & learned events that precede negative events take on aversive properties

    • engaging in behavior that terminates these learned aversive events leads to negative reinforcement

  • requires presentation to the individual of some aversive event, such as shock, noise, or isolation that can be removed or reduced immediately after he or she responds - used infrequently because of using aversive stimuli but used often in everyday life

Punishment

• presentation or removal of a stimulus or event following a response, which decreases the likelihood of that response

• punishment is operative only if the likelihood of the response is reduced

• intervention work de-emphasizes punishment

  • undesirable side effects

  • punishment not needed to suppress or eliminate behavior

• two types of punishment

  • aversive consequence is presented after a response

    • reprimanded or slapped after a behavior

  • removal of a positive event after a response

    • losing privileges after saying out late, losing money for misbehaving, being isolated from others, etc.

Extinction

• the cessation of reinforcement of a response that results in a decrease in the likelihood of the behavior in the future

• defined by relation of a response to consequences and to a change in the probability of behavior in the future

• no longer reinforcing a response eventually leads to reduction or elimination of the response

• a consequence that was previously provided no longer follows the response

• often takes the form of ignoring a behavior that was previously reinforced with attention

  • as often as not, this will not be effective or be effective by itself

  • maybe because attention may not be the reinforcer for that behavior or the only reinforcer

• often, desirable behavior is accidentally extinguished

  • parents pay more attention when kids are playing noisily than when they are playing peacefully

Discrimination

• fact that the individual responds differently under different stimulus conditions

• special contingency arrangements are often needed to ensure that the desired behaviors transfer to new people, situations, and places

• people make discriminations across a variety of situations for most behaviors

  • eating habits probably vary depending upon whether one is at home or ina restaurant

Generalization

• there are special procedures that, if and when needed, can be used to ensure that behavior transfers to other situations, people, and settings and is maintained even after a program is withdrawn

• sometimes even without those special procedures, the effect of reinforcement on behavior may either extend beyond the conditions in which training has taken place or extend to behaviors other than those included in the program

• stimulus generalization

  • generalization or transfer of a response to situations other than those in which training takes place

  • occurs if a response reinforced in one situation/setting also increases in other settings even though not reinforced in the other settings

  • opposite of discrimination

• response generalization

  • changes in behaviors or responses other than those that have been trained or developed

  • occurs if a specific response is developed through reinforcement or other procedures and this systematically alters other behaviors that have not been directly trained

  • Altering one response can inadvertently influence other responses.

    • praise for smiling = increase in smiling, laughing, talking

  • notion of response generalization often is used to explain changes in responses other than the target response

    • effects of an intervention will generalize from one response to other responses that are similar in some way

  • term may not be accurate

    • responses that are not supposed to be focused on may inadvertently receive reinforcing consequences

    • change in one behavior (e.g., studying) often is associated with changes in other behaviors (e.g., socialization, complying with requests) that appear to have no direct relation or resemblance to the target behavior

  • response covariation - the tendency of responses to change together

    • which behaviors change can be predicted by knowing what other behaviors cluster together

• *concepts of stimulus and response generalization are ordinarily used to denote that changes occur across various stimulus conditions (situations or settings) or across responses.

Chapter 3 - How to Identify, Define, and Assess Behavior

pgs 100-132

*assessment is the most important component of any intervention program

• systematic assessment can help us describe and draw inferences about the impact of well-intended programs

Identifying the Goals of the Program

• main goal of a program is to alter or develop a particular behavior, the target behavior

• goal of changing behavior applies to a particular setting or stimulus condition (such as the home, the classroom, certain times of the day, and in the presence of particular individuals)

Guidelines & Frequently Used Criteria

• seven broad criteria are used and capture most of the foci of psychosocial interventions, whether from a behavioral or other approach

  • departure from normative functioning

    • departures can be large and obvious or at the extremes of some acceptable range

    • evident in social or academic behaviors, responses to stimuli in the environment that evoke no reactions of most people but terror in others, or delays from what might be expected

  • impairment in daily functioning, extent to which an individual’s functioning in everyday life is impeded by a particular problem or set of behaviors

    • behavior that interferes with meeting role requirements

  • dangerousness of the behavior to oneself or to others is another reason to intervene

    • danger = physical or emotional harm or risk for such harm

  • behaviors that are illegal or rule-breaking

    • illegal behaviors include driving under the influence of alcohol, using illicit drugs, stealing

    • rule-breaking behaviors include child leaving school repeatedly during the middle of the day or not adhering to family-imposed curfew

    • these behaviors may or may not affect functioning in everyday life very much - may warrant treatment but absence of impairment can make them difficult to detect

  • behaviors that are of concern to individuals themselves or to a significant others

    • broad, catchall category

    • there are occasions in which concerns of significant others are of questionable relevance as targets of the intervention

  • focusing on positive behaviors that may prevent problems from developing

    • focus not on a problem but on behaviors that will avert problems/minimize recurrence

  • promoting adaptive or high-functioning behavior often is the impetus for intervening

    • focus not on overcoming problem or impairment, but developing/building further competence

• in many cases the goal is to increase positive, prosocial behavior, in other cases it is to decrease undesirable or inappropriate behavior

• even when the goal seems to be to decrease, suppress, or eliminate behaviors, the conceptualization of the problem and the interventions used to change the problem often are based on developing positive, adaptive behaviors

• positive opposites are those adaptive and prosocial behaviors that denote how the individual is to behave instead of engaging in the maladaptive behavior

  • developing positive behavior takes advantage of many potent reinforcement techniques

Important Considerations

• for many behaviors, the definition of the problem includes contextual and stimulus conditions

• many behavioral problems stem from a failure to perform behaviors in the presence of particular antecedent events

  • failures considered to reflect a lack of appropriate stimulus control

• whether a given behavior is selected for intervention may relate to the context rather than the behavior

  • bedwetting among 2-4 year old children can be normative but in middle and later childhood its a departure from normative function and a risk factor for psychiatric disturbance

• in some cases, the initial goal of the program may be to develop the responsiveness of individuals to certain consequent event - someone not responding to events that play a major role in social interaction, such as attention, physical contact, praise, or mild disapproval

Issues with Criteria

• target behavior that serves as the focus may one of a larger set of behaviors

  • if there are multiple, select one because of severity or urgency or to improve entry into everyday social networks

• behavior may be embedded in a larger context and perhaps the context should be the focus

Defining the Target Behavior

• operational definitions - defining a concept on the basis of the specific operations used for assessment

  • the move from concept (characteristic or idea) to operations (ways in which that concept will be measured)

  • permits advances, replication of findings, and accumulation of knowledge

  • direct observation of overt behavior is emphasized because overt behavior is viewed as the most direct measure of the intervention focus

  • essential to begin to assess and evaluate interventions

    • abstract concept - not likely to capture entire domain of interest

    • takes a slice or two of the conceptual pie to represent critical components instead

  • means that the operations for assessment are specified, not that we are observing some truth or the one and only definitive measure

    • different operational definitions of same phenomenon can lead to different conclusion

Helpful Guides for Developing the Concrete Focus

• views of experts or other outside sources

  • help decide the precise focus of the intervention and to help move that focus from general statements to more concrete definitions

  • consult with others who are in contact with client or have special info to guide selection of target behaviors

• direct observation of individuals functioning well in the environment

  • what does the behavior consist of or look like when it is performed well or appropriately?

  • if one wishes to develop behavior, it is often very helpful to observe others functioning well in everyday life

  • target behaviors for assessment and intervention to focus on for the withdrawn child

• task analysis

  • facilitates identifying, assessing, and altering more complex sets of behaviors

  • way of proceeding from the general goal of the program to a number of small, trainable, and highly concrete behaviors

  • purpose

    • identify specific behaviors that are required

    • specify the sequence in which these component behaviors are performed

  • soliciting the input of persons with expertise in specific areas identifies the desired behaviors and the order in which they are performed

  • task analysis has been crucial in breaking down complex behaviors so that they can be assessed and trained\

Criteria for Defining Behavior

• definition should meet three criteria: objectivity, clarity, and completeness

• developing a complete definition often creates the greatest difficulty because decision rules are needed to specify how behavior should be scored

• developing clear definitions requires specifying what is and what is not to be included in the behavior

• specificity maximizes the consistency in observing and coding the behaviors

• clear definition does not eliminate judgments but allows a way to codify these judgments so that they are mad relatively consistently

Assessment

• rate of preprogram behavior = baseline or operant rate

• required to reflect behavior change after program is begun

• all throughout program!

• human judgment may distort actual rate of behavior

• direct observations are designed to reveal more directly than global impressions/ratings the level/amount of target behavior and the degree of behavior change

  • not entirely free from human judgment

  • task analysis and developing objective, clear, and complete definitions are designed to minimize judgment of the behaviors selected as the focus and in counting whether they have occurred.

  • overt behaviors - provide direct measure of how well or poorly a behavior-change program is working, useful basis for making decisions about the intervention and whether changes in program are needed

    • does not mean judgments or inferences are removed

Strategies of Assessment - pg 114

measures of overt behavior:

• frequency measure: frequency counts of the behavior and rate of the behavior (frequency divided by time), specific behaviors are tallied

  • useful when target response is discrete & each instance takes a relatively constant amount of time

  • two ways it is used

    • behavior is free to occur on multiple occasions, no fixed limit in # of times behavior could occur

    • opportunities are restricted because of specific discrete trials or in response to stimuli presented only a specific number of time

    • rate of response can be obtained by dividing the frequency of responses by the number of minutes observed each day - frequency per minute/rate of response which is comparable for different durations of observation

    • pros - relatively simple to score, readily reflect changes over time, expressed the mount of behavior performed

• discrete categorization: a list of multiple responses each relating to some overall goal, each is scored as having occurred or not occurred each day

  • in some ways, similar to frequency measure - but different

    • several different behaviors can be included & each scored as having occurred or not

      • behaviors go together in forming a larger unit or goal

    • there is only a limited number of opportunities to perform the responses as defined by the total number of steps involved or number of component behaviors

  • readily adaptable to many different situations

  • behaviors that form list don’t need to be related to each other or represent steps of a single activity - flexible method of observation

• interval recording: a block of time is set for observation, that period is divided into smaller intervals, behavior of interest is scored as having occurred or not in that interval

  • time sampling is interval recording in which multiple blocks of times are used to sample behavior at different points throughout the day or across multiple settings

  • several response occurrences within an interval are not counted separately

  • try to record after interval not during so you don’t miss any behaviors that may occur while recording (if looking at multiple behaviors rather than a single one)

  • very flexible - can record virtually any behavior

  • observations from interval recordings can be easily converted into a % (# of intervals in which response recorded as occurring/total number of intervals observed x 100)

• duration: recording how long or the amount of time the response is performed

  • useful for ongoing responses that are continuous rather than discrete acts/responses of extremely short duration

  • the onset and termination of the response must be carefully defined

  • researchers must decide how to handle changes in the intensity of the behavior and pauses for consistent recordings

  • generally restricted to situations in which the length of time of a behavior is a major concern

• latency: recording the amount of time before the response occurs

  • not difficult to measure

  • useful when individuals in applied settings do the observations (parents, teachers)

  • start time usually easy to specify

  • often goal is related directly to time

• intensity: recording the magnitude, strength, or force of the response

  • volume of voice, noise level, magnitude of tantrum

  • can be recorded through automated, mechanical devices

  • observation of intensity can be difficult without a precise measure

• number of people who perform the behavior: a count of everyone who engages in the behavior

  • used in group situations (classroom, school, community)

  • used to increase overall performance of a particular behavior

  • require classifying the response as having occurred or not but with the individuals rather than the # of times response occurred

  • useful when the explicit goal of a program is to increase performance in a large group of subjects

• other strats:

  • response-specific measures

    • unique to particular behaviors under investigation

    • directly assess the response or product of the response that is recognize to be of obvious applied significance

    • often available from existing data systems or records

    • cautions

      • data obtained in institutional records are not always kept reliably, may not reflect the care that investigators usually invoke when developing a measure

  • biological measures

    • heart or pulse rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, blood volume, muscle tension, and brainwave activity

    • directly reflect many problems of interest or are highly correlated with the occurrence of psychological and medical conditions

    • Diverse clinical problems have been automatically measured with such assessments including insomnia, obsessive-compulsive disorders, pain, hyperactivity, sexual dysfunction, tics, tremors, and many others

    • permits measurement of precursors, the target behavior itself, ir a characteristic strongly associated with the target behavior but more easily measured

  • self-reports

    • when rating a problem or target focus, subjective views are influenced by various perceptual distortions and biases that are not part of the actual behavior being rated

    • not invariably inaccurate, but more readily controlled by client than direct measures of overt behavior

    • circumstances in which we do not and perhaps cannot report on critical facets of our experience

    • research has now developed procedures to induce false memories - people can be very confident but reports can be shown to be completely inaccurate

    • sometimes the behavior is not easily publicly observable because the behavior is performed privately or at times throughout the day that cannot be monitored by anyone other than the clients themselves

    • subjective experience (self-report) was noted as being critical— whatever we do, whatever behaviors we change, consumers’ (clients themselves) views of these changes and whether the changes make a difference to them are important

    • critically important because of its relation to other important indices, including life and death

    • concern - readily subject to distortion because clients can tell what the investigator wants, questions can solicit information but be evaluated different from from what’s reported

  • reports by others

    • measures completed by individuals who have access to, can observe, and can interact closely with the client

    • do not invariably reflect actual behavior

      • different informants have at best moderate agreement in rating another person

      • ratings are influenced by factors that can be distinguished from the behavior or characteristics that are being rated

    • play a critical role in intervention research and single-case research in particular

Decisions in Assessing and Sampling Behavior

• number of times that data will be collected

  • frequency of observation depends on such factors as the variation of behavior over time, the availability of observers, and scheduling exigencies in the setting

  • behavior should be observed on as many occasions as possible, and preferably daily or multiple occasions per week

• length of time set aside for a given observation period

  • behavior should be observed for a period of time that will allow the behavior to be displayed and to provide a sufficient sample of the behavior

• when the observations are conducted

  • usually it is not feasible to observe behavior over an extended period or over several shorter periods throughout the day to represent performance across all time and settings

  • behavior might be observed for a single block of time during the period in which behavior change is most obviously required.

  • initial assessment at different times over a few days can determine which periods require the greatest attention

• how many observers, are they consistent or changing, training for consistency

Chapter 4 - How to Ensure the Quality of Assessment

pg 138-162

Flexibility - assessing client behavior includes a broad range of options

• reflected in conditions in which behavior is assessed and how to evoke/obtain the behavior so it can be observed and altered by the intervention

Rigor - assessment must meet some special standards and requirements

Conditions of Assessment

Conditions under which Observations are Made

• natural vs contrived tasks, activities, and settings

  • natural - performance is observed without intervening or structuring the situation for the client

    • often not possible or feasible - behaviors not easily observed because of low frequency, require special conditions, costly, time-consuming

  • interventions often focus on behaviors that rarely occur or not frequency enough to assess/intervene

    • so, situations are often contrived to evoke responses so that the target behavior can be assessed and new behaviors can be trained

  • advantages

    • provides info that often would be too difficult to obtain under naturalistic conditions

    • provide consistent and standardized assessment conditions

  • disadvantages

    • possibility that performance may have little or no relation to the performance under naturalistic conditions

    • possibility that people interact differently under contrived conditions in a clinic from how they would under ordinary circumstances

• natural environment vs lab settings