A Change In the Environment

Hi and welcome to my blog you've stumbled upon!  In an effort to increase my blog postings, I've decided to change the environment from which I blog and I've moved the blog to tumblr.  My random behaviour ramblings can now be found at http://behaviouristatplay.tumblr.com/.  Please follow me there!

Thanks and happy reading.

Tricia-Lee

ABC's...Easy As 123 Million?

In the world of a behaviourist, the ABC's mean more than just the letters of the alphabet.  They represent the relationship as part of one's behaviour(s): the (A)ntecedent-(B)ehaviour-(C)onsequence chain that is most of the behaviours we demonstrate.  To keep things simple, antecedents are things that happen before a noted behaviour.  You can call them "triggers" or "cues" if you'd like.  For example, for many of us on the roads, the traffic light is one antecedent to our driving behaviour.  If it's green, we go.  If it's red, we stop.  Meanwhile, consequences are the events or responses that occur after a behaviour.  These are either reinforcing (therefore behaviour maintains or increases over time) or they are punishing (therefore, behaviour decreases).  In the traffic light example, attending to the red light and putting on the breaks results in us safely stopping in time; thus, preventing any harm or accident.  For the most part, going through repeated experiences of the same A-B-C chain results in us learning and maintaining our skills.

Imagine all the A-B-C chains you go through on any given day.  Now imagine your role as part of someone else's A-B-C chain (i.e. something you said or did is the antecedent or consequence of someone else's behaviour).  If you're not overwhelmed already, next imagine all the different people in your life and the lives of others fulfilling the same antecedents/consequences but under different circumstances or in different environments.  The combinations of A-B-C chains seems almost endless.  The Count can't even keep up!

With so many varied and possible A-B-C chains, it explains how we as humans are unique: each with our own set of behaviours, skills, talents, interests and yes, even challenges.  We all have our own unique learning history that sets us and our behaviour apart from others.  Human behaviour is unique.  We are not all robots, nor does behaviourist theory attempt to make a person into one.  Unfortunately, this is an ever-returning criticism of behaviourism: that it ignores individual uniqueness.  I did fairly well in my finite mathematics course in high school and so I'm certain that the rate at which someone will find their perfect behavioural match is an unthinkable number. 

Perhaps The Count will let us know when he gets to that magic number 1 in ??????

Celebrity Bad Behaviour

Recently, CBC Radio 1's Jian Ghomeshi discussed whether or not he thought he should seek an interview with Charlie Sheen for his radio show, Q.  While I'll let you listen to his podcast to know what decision he came to, it made me think about, and question our relationship with celebrity hollywood gossip.  No need to get into the media storm surrounding Sheen and his bizarre behaviours of late, but isn't it sad that the man is more popular and more sought out for an interview or talk show spot since his most recent trip down destructive lane?  What's even more sad is that this attention comes in the form of poking fun at what could be a serious mental health problem.  Meanwhile, your average Joe experiencing his first psychotic break has to jump through flaming hoops and over wait list hurdles in order to be seen, heard and taken seriously.

We laugh at celebrity bad behaviour and yet in the same breath scoff at what's being said and done.  For people whose job it is to entertain (i.e., get our attention) our initial 'laughing at' is all the attention they need to keep going despite the tone we end up taking.  Their behaviour is not ours to judge if it's our attention that maintains it.  The funny thing about attention as a reinforcer for behaviour is that most people don't differentiate between positive and negative attention; they'll take what they can get!  In Hollywood, this concept is more often coined, "any press is good press".  I think the same holds true for any of us: any attention is good attention.  Many of us don't chose to engage in destructive behaviour(s), but if it is one of only a few ways we can get people to pay attention to us, we're going to keep doing it.  That is, until the day the people in our lives decide they will no longer pay attention to a particular behaviour of ours and stick to it, together.

Guess there's little chance of getting the million plus twitter followers Sheen has recently acquired to un-follow and ignore his antics.  And we wonder why celebrity bad behaviour persists?

Side note: to check out a celebrity whose behaviours I do appreciate, consider following @jianghomeshi instead

How Much Is Too Much?

I am in awe of how some songs, pieces of music are inherently reinforcing for some and not others.  I think this speaks to how unique our experiences with music are, and by extension, how anything can be thought of as potentially reinforcing.  While I may not enjoy every genre of music, I appreciate the vast number of them out there and the growing variety of sounds musicians experiment with to create new genres.  The sources for reinforcement seem almost endless; and yet, at some point, a particular song or genre seems to fade away from our playlist.  This effect can be described as satiation: when over-exposure to an item, activity etc. changes its reinforcing effects.  Listen to a song, album or artist 'too many' times and you might lose interest.

Given the phenomena of satiation I am surprised that there isn't more of a variety on some radio stations.  It seems that there is this wave of the same 10 or so songs that no matter which station I put on, I am pretty much guaranteed to hear within the hour.  At some point in the wave these songs become aversive, and I turn the station or the radio off upon hearing any one of them (an example of negative reinforcement).  Not only am I satiating on these songs, but my 'turning the radio off' behaviour is increasing.  I cannot imagine the radio stations benefit from this type of listening behaviour, so there must be another source of reinforcement for them to keep their formula going.  While my radio listening habits may be effected by over-exposure of the songs they play, this over-exposure seems to be paying off for them (i.e., it is being reinforced).  I am guessing that these radio stations are on a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement where they get a pay-out depending on how many, or how often a song gets played.

Because of this (and other aversive stimuli radio stations seem to present themselves with/as), I embrace my mp3 player(s).  Variety, choice, immediate gratification, and if I get bored with a song, I'll have plenty more to choose from.  I may still satiate on a song, album or artist but at least there is another source of reinforcement next down on the playlist.

It's Not All About Rewards

This posting has been weeks in the making.  I have had a lot of discussion lately about rewards and another common misconception surrounding behaviourism.  Many people against behaviourism cite that rewards don't always work, are contrived and take away from the natural and intrinsic motivation which should be inherent in our behaviour(s).  Where things get tricky is that behaviourism does not speak of rewards, but of reinforcement and these are two different (but often paired together) things.

Rewards are contrived.  They are often things that others assume other people want like: money, free trips, candy, pizza lunches, a "good job" sticker or a "free" whatever.  It assumes that these "things" are desired and worth our effort to learn and succeed.  Reinforcement however, is anything that happens after a behaviour that increases the likelihood of that behaviour happening again.  I cannot stress enough the "anything" part of that sentence.  A reinforcer can be anything: food, a book, access to friends, a smile, a nice feeling on our skin, a rubber glove, a piece of paper, a silly word, the satisfaction of completing something, etc.  I could go on and on.  The key point is that reinforcement is defined by its effect on behaviour and not on its pleasing or preferred attributes; hence, the 'anything can be a reinforcer', even something we do not like ourselves.  If a behaviour is increasing or maintaining itself, then reinforcement is at play.  In many cases, reinforcement occurs naturally in the environment or is inherent in the activity; its effect on behaviour go unnoticed.  We do not have to be aware of it for reinforcement to have occurred.

If a new behaviour is not increasing or, if an already established behaviour is decreasing, then there is no reinforcement.  Therefore, when claims are made about rewards not working, they are correct.  The reward is not working because the reward is not acting as a reinforcer.  Only sometimes do we get it right where a reward actually functions as a reinforcer.  But, we also make the mistake of assuming that because we (or the general population) like a particular thing, that it will be rewarding for others.  Even a preferred item (like money) can fail as a reinforcer.

It's a shame that when we get it wrong, Skinner, and the field of behaviourism gets the blame and the science is written off as dated, useless.  To me, it seems that people took one part of Skinner's ideas and, without much thought for the science behind it, over-generalized its use as a way to 'motivate' (cough, cough, control, cough) others.  And because this might have increased productivity or "good behaviour" for a while, those implementing the rewards were themselves reinforced for doing so.  

See how reinforcement just sneaks right in there?  It's everywhere and it's happening all the time.  Rewards on the other hand, can be hit or miss.  Don't blame behaviourism because the reward failed to do what you hoped to get out of someone.  Look for what else is happening (or not happening) and you just might see reinforcement in action.

New Week Resolutions

A new year.  A new month.  A new week.  A new day.  

I am always curious at the goals people set for themselves for the new year; setting the course for an entire year.  Quit smoking, lose weight, go to the gym more, stop eating donuts (okay...that last one may have been mine).  If you're thinking within the time frame of a year, those are some high expectations.  Expectations, that if not met, then make it look like you have failed.  That's not being very fair to yourself, now is it?  Instead of 'go big or go home', a more fair way would be to just go home and figure out what rate you are already performing at and then go small.  This is often referred to as gathering the baseline data.  If 'quiting smoking' is your goal and you're currently smoking 25 cigarettes a day, expecting yourself to go down to zero in a day may be too big of a change in rate.  Instead, I'd aim to cut your smoking by 1-2 cigarettes a day for a few weeks and see how you're doing.  Or, if you've never set foot inside a gym (i.e., baseline is zero), then setting a goal of once every two weeks may be more realistic.

The nice thing about setting the bar at a much more realistic level, is that once the goal has been met, you can always increase/decrease it further.  On the other hand, setting the bar too high and then never reaching it sure doesn't feel good.  This is where people often give up.  Why bother?  I can't do it!  That is why I propose a new trend in goal-setting: new week resolutions or new day resolutions!  For me, this means eating only one donut a week.

There's obviously much more to setting and attaining your goals than just a smaller time-frame or a close-to-baseline rate of behaviour (and the answer isn't more willpower either).  It's more than I can get into in one blog post - hence the reason for this whole blog in the first place!  But some other goal-setting tips:

• Be specific and concrete as possible (e.g., texas style donuts don't count)
• Word your goal in the positive - what you WILL do, versus what you WON'T do.  
• And in some cases, if you're trying to decrease a particular behaviour of yours, it also helps to define what may replace it.  For example, to stop nail-biting, you may need to replace it with 5 minutes of using a stress-ball or giving yourself a finger massage.  The theory behind this, is that time spent doing the replacement behaviour, may either take away from the target behaviour or fulfill the same consequences as the target behaviour.

We're less than three hours away from 2011.  I wish everyone a happy new day, week or month of goals and resolutions ahead.  Keep them small, specific and positive and remember to find yourself replacements and it can be a positive and prosperous new year!

Afraid of Change?

We hear it time and time again: nobody likes change.  It sends some people into panic mode.  Others act stubborn while holding on to the same old way of doing things.  And why not?  You already know what to expect with the same old things.  With the same old things, you can reliably predict that reinforcement is coming your way.  Day in and day out, these 'things' have signaled to you that good things are about to happen.  Now all of a sudden, someone wants to change things and you don't know what to expect.  Will the same good things happen?  Does this new thing signal a reinforcer or a punisher is coming my way?  I suspect that this unknown factor is behind the resistance to change.  Having not gone through the sequence of  'new thing' → new behaviour → consequence (I use the word 'thing' here to stay away from the technical term known as 'stimulus discriminative') it is difficult to predict whether a good or bad outcome will follow.  Sometimes people don't know what to do with themselves when things change and there is a valiant attempt at securing what once was.   All people are trying to do is ensure that a reinforcer comes through.


People are expected to just deal with change.  Kids especially are just supposed to "go with the flow" - do what the adults say.  While it is a hallmark skill of maturity and emotional regulation to adjust and adapt, we could all help people deal a little better with the change that is about to occur by recognizing it takes a few more practices and a continuous rate of reinforcement to set out on a new track.  I believe this is what we would refer to as demonstrating patience.  

So, the lesson here: when things change, all we need is just a little patience.  We will eventually learn that most of the new things we're doing turned out alright.