Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Transferring Behavior to New Settings and Making It Last: Generality of Behavior Change Chapter

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Transferring Behavior to New Settings and Making It

Last: Generality of Behavior Change

Chapter 16


Generality

• Trained behavior transfers from training situation to natural environment

• Training leads to development of new behavior that has not been specifically trained

• Trained behavior is maintained in the natural environment over time


Stimulus Generalization

• Behavior becomes more probable in the presence of the stimulus or situation as a result of having been reinforced in the presence of another stimulus or situation– Physical similarity– Stimuli in common-element stimulus class

– Stimuli in stimulus equivalence class


Response Generalization• Behavior more probable in the presence of a stimulus or situation as a result of another behavior having been strengthened in the presence of that situation– Considerable physical similarity of responses

– Minimal physical similarity of responses– Functionally equivalent responses

• Different responses that produce the same consequences– Cooking dinner – different methods, food produced

• Behavioral momentum – as a result of reinforcement, probability of other functionally equivalent responses increases


Programming

• Two important situations:– Training situation– Target situation – where we want the generality to occur

• The more physically similar the training and the target situations are, the more stimulus generalization will occur


Programming OperantStimulus Generalization

• Train in the target situation– Want the final stages to be in a situation as close to target as possible

– Best way train in target situation

• Vary the training conditions– Greater variety of stimuli during training means there is a greater probability that the stimuli will be present in target situation


Programming OperantStimulus Generalization

• Program Common Stimuli– Use stimuli that are present in both the training and target settings

• Train Sufficient Stimulus Exemplars– Training occurs in a large number of situations and to a large number of stimuli

– General case programming


Programming OperantResponse Generalization

• Train sufficient response exemplars– EX: Programming for generality of plural•Star, stars•Apple, apples, plant, plants

• Vary the acceptable response during training– Creativity


Programming OperantBehavior Maintenance

• Want behavior to last• Depends upon whether behavior will continue to be reinforced

• Behavioral Trapping– Design program so it matches the contingencies available in natural environment

– Behavior will be trapped – maintained – by natural environment


Programming OperantBehavior Maintenance

• Change the behavior of people in the environment– Work with people in the environment to teach them to reinforce appropriate behaviors

• Intermittent schedules of reinforcements in target situation

• Give control to individual– Assess and reinforce own generalized behavior

– Recruit a natural community of reinforcement• Feedback from people around


Pitfalls of Generality

• Some behaviors should not be generalized– May be inappropriate in some situations

• Sometimes learning fails to be generalized

Documents

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Transferring Behavior to New Settings and Making It Last: Generality of Behavior Change Chapter