the foundation: discriminative stimuli

In the last foundation post, I introduced the ABCs of ABA. Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence. Today I am going to introduce another set of letters: the S^D. S^D stands for discriminative stimulus (read: ess-dee). In an operant condition, such as the ABC examples I posted last time, the S^D is basically the same thing as the antecedent stimulus. It is the stimulus that preceded the behavior in the past that resulted in a consequence.

In the “sit” example,

Antecedent	Behavior	Consequence
owner says “sit”	dog sits	owner praises and pats dog

the owner saying “sit” is considered the S^D. The owner saying “sit” is correlated with the fact that if the dog emits the correct behavior (sitting down), reinforcement is available. However, if the dog lies down instead, the owner will not (or should not, at least) give the dog praise.

This is a big problem in dog training when the owner is not clear with her dog about what behavior she wants. Many dogs will default to sitting down when they see a piece of food in their owner’s hand. Or they will sit when the owner stands a certain way in front of them. This just shows that the S^D in those cases are not the vocal cue “sit”, but the presence of the food or the owner’s stance. If your dog only sits when you have food in your hand, that’s because you’ve taught them that’s the S^D for sitting – you want to change that as soon as you can. I will be posting a “sit” protocol on this blog soon!

A human example: see chocolate bar (S^D): open chocolate bar (behavior) –> eating chocolate (consequence = yum). The presence of the chocolate bar in the future will most likely end up with you eating it. Because it’s automatically reinforcing.

In summary, S^Ds are basically the signal that tells someone or something what behavior to emit.

clicker training

Many dog trainers and owners these days use clicker training. The principles of clicker training are rooted in positive reinforcement and the conditioned reinforcer. Clickers can look like this:

or this: or this:

and maybe there are others – these are just some i found after a simple google search for “clicker”. They all make the same clicking noise (although the image in the middle is of a i-click which is a bit quieter than the average clicker). The clicking noise is paired with food. We (trainers) like to use high value food – better than the usual milkbone or “low-quality” dog treats that owners freely give to their dogs. We like to use chicken, steak, salmon, etc. The clicker is paired with the food by clicking and then immediately feeding the dog a piece of food. The dog then associates the clicker as a predictor of food so the clicker itself becomes a conditioned reinforcer. Many times when owners just take out the clicker, dogs get excited! They know good things are to come.

Tips on pairing the clicker with food:

• be in a neutral position – don’t make eye contact with the dog and try to vary your body positions. this way, the dog will not associate your body position or eye contact or anything else you may be consistently doing to the food, but just the sound of the clicker.
• always feed immediately after clicking
• the food should be of high value
• this does not take long – no more than 15-20 click/food pairings should be sufficient

Why do we use clickers?
Whenever we want to teach a new behavior to an animal, we want to use positive reinforcement. And usually, the best reinforcer to use is food. We are, in essence, playing a game with the animal. Telling them – if you do this behavior, you will be rewarded with food. However, during training, it is important that the consequence follows immediately after the behavior. For example, if you are teaching the behavior, the organism elicits the behavior, then thirty seconds later you give the food, who knows what happened in those thirty seconds?? The animal may have been doing a totally unrelated behavior and may not make the association between the behavior and the food. Therefore, we use the clicker as a bridging stimulus. It bridges the gap between the behavior and the reinforcer. We are able to click (after some human learning) faster than we can give the animal food. It increases efficiency in animal training.

the foundation: reinforcers & punishers

There are two classes of reinforcers & punishers: unconditioned and conditioned.

Unconditioned reinforcers & punishers are those that are innately reinforcing or punishing to us. As in, ones that do not require any learning. Some examples of unconditioned reinforcers include food, water, oxygen, and sex. Some unconditioned punishers are extreme temperatures, food (when you are full), eating, and pain.

Conditioned reinforcers & punishers are those that have been paired with other reinforcers or punishers in the past so in themselves have become reinforcing or punishing. These conditioned stimuli vary from person to person. While one stimulus can be a reinforcer for me, it may be punishing to another person. Conditioned reinforcers can be just as powerful as unconditioned ones. An example of a personal conditioned reinforcer is jewelry. An example of a personal conditioned punisher is cheese (blech).

Dog trainers use a lot of unconditioned (treats) and conditioned (clickers) reinforcers. Usually the conditioned reinforcer is paired with food and thus becomes a reinforcer. However, this in no way has to be a clicker – one could also use one’s voice or a hand motion.

More on clicker training coming up in our next training tips post!

the foundation: ABC – the three-term contingency

So far we have talked about two major topics in ABA: reinforcement and punishment. These are both operant operations – ones that are based on the consequences of the behavior. Behavior analysts use the basic “unit” of ABC when analyzing operant behavior:

Antecedent
Behavior
Consequence

The ABC is a three-term contingency which outlines that in the presence of an antecedent stimulus, the behavior occurs. The consequence then strengthens that antecedent-behavior relationship so that in the future, the behavior will occur more or less frequently in the presence of that antecedent. I think this is easiest to demonstrate with examples:

Antecedent	Behavior	Consequence
owner says “sit”	dog sits	owner praises and pats dog
you see refrigerator	open fridge	get food
raining outside	take umbrella	stay dry
red traffic light	speed up	get into car accident
ad pops up on PC	click ad	PC shuts down

In the above table, you can see that there is something that immediately precedes a behavior. The consequence that occurs after the behavior will then determine if the behavior will occur more or less frequently in the future. The first four ABCs are examples of positive reinforcement, while the last two are examples of positive punishment. Can you make out why?

I’ll explain it for the first example. Remember, reinforcement is the increase in the future probability of the behavior. In the past, whenever the owner said “sit” and the dog sat, the owner would give the dog a treat or praise. This will increase the frequency of the dog sitting when the owner says “sit” in the future. Try doing that for the remaining 5 examples!

Three-term contingencies are all around us. Can you think of any real-world examples around you?

Next post: Discriminative Stimuli

the foundation: positive + negative punishment

Review:

• punishment – the decrease of a behavior contingent on a consequence
• positive – the presentation of a stimulus
• negative – the removal of a stimulus

It is oh-so-important to keep in mind that punishment is not necessarily an aversive, bad, painful, emotional, (insert any word normally associated with punishment), thing, although many times, it can be. (*Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that punishment procedures can be ethically challenging, and this post is just informative and is by no means a promotion or demotion of using it in the real world)

This post will basically mirror the previous foundation post for consistency and hopefully ease of understanding.

According to the definitions above, positive punishment is the presentation of a stimulus following a behavior, that causes that behavior to decrease/go away.

Example: One evening, I left the car radio on before I turned the engine off. The next morning when I started the car, the radio BLASTED music making me jump. The rush of blood to my head and being startled taught me to always turn the radio off before I turn off the engine.

This is a very common experience with painful experiences. The loud music was presented to (& scared) me (positive), so that really decreased the keeping-radio-on-when-turning-off-engine behavior in the future (punishment).

Along the same lines, negative punishment is when, after a behavior, something is removed from the environment, causing the future probability of that behavior occurring to decrease. The stimulus that is removed in negative punishment procedures is usually something that the organism finds reinforcing.

Example: You are playing tug-of-war with your dog. woohoo! it’s a lot of fun! the dog loves it, you love it. but, suddenly, fido’s teeth come a bit too close to your side of the tug toy – as in, you feel his teeth on your skin. you immediately drop your end of the tug toy, which makes the tug toy now lifeless and not-so-interesting for your dog. After a few seconds, you pick it up again and play! But next time the dog’s teeth come too close, you drop the toy and look away. In the future when you play tug-of-war with fido, fido’s teeth don’t come near you.

In this story, the tug-of-war toy (which is very reinforcing for the dog) is removed (negative) after the behavior of teeth touching skin. Furthermore, since the behavior goes away, it is punishment. This is a great way to teach your dog how to play tug-of-war nicely! Your dog will soon learn that touching teeth to skin means no more fun.

 

Coming Soon: DVD with Bob Bailey

Trailer for a DVD on operant conditioning and its applications at chicken camp and zoos in Sweden. Starring Bob Bailey, my mentor’s mentor. It’s one of my dreams to attend chicken camp while Bob Bailey is still teaching it!!

the foundation: positive + negative reinforcement

now that you know what the true definition of reinforcement + punishment are, it’s important to clarify the terms positive and negative. These terms are also ones that already have common misconceptions in our everyday language. Positive = a good thing, and negative = a bad thing. However, this is not applicable to ABA.

Positive denotes the presentation of a stimulus – something that had not been there before the behavior.

Therefore, positive reinforcement occurs when after a behavior, something that was not there before is presented, and this causes the frequency of the behavior to increase in the future.

Example: Your dog is standing in front of you. You put some treats in your hand, and lift your hand up over the dog’s nose. This will cause your dog to bend his head as far back as possible until it will cause him to sit down. You then give him the treats. You repeat this one more time and the same thing happens. You remove the treats from your hand and just lift your empty hand, and your dog sits. Now every time you lift your hand in front of your dog, your dog sits.

In this case, the treats that are given to the dog after he sits, is the new stimulus that is presented (positive) and since the sitting behavior increases, it is reinforcement.

Negative denotes that something that was already in the environment is taken away.

Therefore, negative reinforcement occurs when after a behavior, something that was present in the environment is removed, and this causes the frequency of the behavior to increase in the future. This is usually associated with aversive stimuli.

Example: You get a mosquito bite on your leg, and it itches. A lot. You know you shouldn’t, but you scratch it. When you scratch it, the itching goes away and it feels good. So in the future, you scratch your mosquito bite more often to get rid of the itching.

In this scenario, the itch is the stimulus that is taken away (negative) by the behavior, and since scratching increases in the future, it is reinforcement.

Next post: Positive & Negative Punishment

the foundation: reinforcement + punishment

When most people are faced with the terms reinforcement and punishment, they say that reinforcement is “good” and punishment is “bad”. In our language, this is true – reinforcement has a positive connotation, while punishment has a very negative one.

The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following “psychological” definition of reinforcement:

The action or an act of establishing or strengthening of a particular response to a stimulus or a learnt behaviour through the repetition of a rewarding or unpleasant event contingent on the response.

YES! I was so excited to see that ABA-accurate definition in there.

Unfortunately, though, the OED’s “psychological” definition for punishment is not as good as the one for reinforcement:

The infliction of an unpleasant stimulus, as pain, deprivation, etc., on an organism as a method of behavioural control, so that unwanted forms of behaviour are suppressed and the desired behaviour pattern is established.

That’s more of an everyday definition that we use.

In order to understand the basics of ABA, it is essential that you know that reinforcement means increasing the future probability of a behavior contingent on a response. punishment means decreasing the future probability of a behavior contingent on a response.

Note how the only difference is either increasing or decreasing the behavior. There is no “good”, “bad”, “right”, or “wrong” associated with either of the terms in ABA.

Let’s say you have a plant, and you water it every other day. The plant stays healthy and green (what you want). As a result, you continue to water your plant every other day. Therefore, your behavior of watering the plant every other day is reinforced by the plant’s apparent health. But, again, reinforcement is not always associated with favorable situations.

Let’s say you have a son, and you are shopping at Toys `R Us for a present for the child’s friend. Your child sees a brand new Bakugan toy and asks you to buy it for him. You say “no”. Your son then throws himself on the floor, cries, and yells “I WANT THE TOY!!!!!” repeatedly. You then groan “fine~” and buy it for him. On future shopping trips, you find that if you say “no”, your child automatically throws a tantrum. Voila! Your child’s tantrum behavior is now reinforced by you giving him what he wants.

On the flip side, you water your plant every other day. The plant starts to wilt and becomes yellow. You think that your watering schedule is affecting the plant’s health, so you stop watering the plant every other day. Therefore, your behavior of watering the plant every other day is punished by the plant’s rotting. Similar to the reinforcement examples, punishment does not always have to be associated with adverse situations.

Now that your son throws a tantrum every time he wants something in a store, you are almost at the point where you don’t want to take him anywhere. So you decide to put your foot down and you just won’t take anymore of this! The next time you are in a store, your son throws a tantrum over a candy bar. You ignore his tantrumming and take him straight out of the store. After two more events like this, you notice that your son’s tantrums are diminishing. Therefore, you have punished his behavior of tantrumming. Congratulations! See, just because you punished the behavior, doesn’t mean you were a horrible parent or inflicted pain or physical trauma to your son.

Whew! I know this is a lot, but I hope you guys are still following along!

Next post: Positive + Negative Reinforcement/Punishment

the foundation: reflexive & operant conditioning

I think the hardest thing to accept/learn in ABA is the basic terminology. There is so much information, but I’ll start with what I think makes up the foundation of the science.

There are two general classes of behaviors and learning:

1. respondent (or reflexive) behaviors / respondent conditioning
2. operant behaviors / operant conditioning

Respondent behaviors are those that are innate – those that do not require any learning. A good example is the eye blink reflex. We have a reflex of blinking our eyes when something comes too close to our eyes or comes close suddenly – like a poof of air.

Respondent behaviors can be conditioned. As in, a new stimulus that was not originally a respondent behavior can become one. Ivan Pavlov is probably the most well known researcher to demonstrate this. Pavlov observed that dogs in his lab would salivate when the door to the lab was opened. The sight of the door opening seemed to have become a “signal” to the dogs that they were going to be fed. In order to test his hypothesis, Pavlov conducted his famous experiment during which he played a metronome right before he fed the dogs. After a couple of trials, he found that just playing the metronome alone would trigger salivation. The metronome, which initially was a neutral stimulus, was now a conditioned stimulus. And in the presence of that conditioned stimulus, salivation occurred; it formed a conditioned reflex. Something that was unrelated now triggered an innate behavior to occur.

Operant behaviors are those whose future frequencies are determined by their consequences in the past. Unlike respondent behaviors, which are triggered by a stimulus before the behavior, operant behaviors are controlled by what happened after the behavior in the past. The example I used in my first post about turning on the light switch is an operant behavior (we turn on the light switch more often when it is dark because in the past, turning on the light switch has made the room brighter).

Operant behaviors can also be conditioned, or learned. We can use the principles of operant conditioning to teach an organism to do more or less of a behavior. In order to do this, though, we have to understand reinforcement and punishment – two terms that have very different definitions in ABA as compared to our everyday vernacular.

Next post: the foundation: reinforcement and punishment

PS. I haven’t gotten around to editing the video of teaching midas how to do “paw” (and it was much harder with him than expected), but I will post a video or two as soon as i get around to it!

What is ABA?

ABA, or Applied Behavior Analysis, is the science of behavior modification. Although it is under the field of Psychology, it is very different from a lot of subfields within Psychology that we are familiar with – disciplines such as cognitive science, psychotherapy, or Freudism.

ABA deals with behaviors that one can see. It is also based on the assumption that individuals behave. Behavior is a result of the interaction between an individual and the environment. For example, when we come home in the evening, we turn on the light. The house is dark, so we flip the switch. Turning on the light is a behavior, and it was done because we wanted to change the environment we are in. Furthermore, in the past, we have flipped the light switch because by doing so, the room becomes brighter. We are reinforced by the brightness in the room. Therefore, in the future, the likelihood that we will flip the switch when the room gets dark increases. This is called reinforcement history.

At this point, you’re probably like, “whaa?” and wondering where I’m going with this. As a student of ABA, I have learned a lot about the theory behind the practice and want to share that theory with you. I believe that ABA is a universal science – it is just as applicable to me as it is applicable to the squirrel right outside your window. Animals learn the same way we do – from experience. I want to apply ABA to dog behavior and want to show everybody how effective ABA can be when it comes to modifying our pet’s behaviors.

I hope you come back soon to learn more about what dogs plus ABA can equal!