antecendent interventions
- antecedent stimuli are manipulated to evoke desirable behaviors that can be differentially reinforced and to decrease undesirable behaviors that interfere with desirable behaviors
- also called antecedent control procedures or antecedent manipulations
how to perform antecedent interventions?
- present, modify, develop new S^D for desirable behavior
speeded up by using shortcut methods - presenting EO for desirable behavior
- decreasing response effort for desirable behavior
- removing or modifying existing S^D for undesirable behavior
overt/immediate S^Ds easier to identify than covert or distant S^Ds
desirable alternative behavior should be encouraged - presenting AO for undesirable behavior
- increasing response effort for undesirable behavior
- noncontingent reinforcement
what should antecedent be used in conjunction with?
differential reinforcement and extinction that will strengthen the desirable behavior once it occurs
Mathews and Dix
- syndicated comic strips depicting passengers and cars
- baseline: 15%
- program: after appearance of unbelted- used written prompts, sent letters to advocate use of belts, sent second letter
- results: depiction increased to 41%
Ward and Carnes
- college football linebackers not performing well on reads, drops and tackles
- program: practice taped and analyzed, asked to select goals that improved on baseline levels, performance posted publicly
- results: performance improved, set goals and post progress acted as EOs that increased reinforcing potency of feedback and improved performance
nudge theory
behavior manipulated by changing the ease or difficulty of performing it
Brothers et al.
- children with autism in treatment center
- decrease amount of recyclable paper thrown into trash cans in social service agency
- baseline: weighed amount of recyclable paper in trash
- program: multiple baseline across settings, high/low response effort
- results: high response: recyclable was 40% lower, low response: 89% less paper in trash
Goldiamond
- marital therapy
- cheated on wife
- screamed at wife, felt ashamed and sulked
- program: changing antecedents, rearranged furniture, wife bought new outfits, go out
- results: decrease in screaming led to decreased sulking, new enviro served as S^Ds for civilized conversational behavior
Kennedy
- 20 yr olds with developmental disabilities
- problem: stereotypic behaviors, self-injurious, aggression
- problem behaviors when teacher made task demands but not for task demands at low rates or social comments
- function was escape from high task
- program: demands at low rates, demands gradually increased as long as problem remained low
- results: task demands increased with no increase in problem, positive social effect also increased, starting with low rate of demands and gradually increased them served as an AO for escape
what is the opposite of nudge?
sludge
Zhou et al.
- severe developmental disabilities
- SIB: hand mouthing that caused damage to mouth/face
- analysis: SIB less frequent when leisure materials available/staff gave attention, SIB more frequent when women were alone, hand mouthing was maintained by automatic reinforcement
- program: baseline- % intervals containing SIB recorded, response-effort condition- wore flexible sleeves that provided rigidity
- results: hand mouthing declined to near-zero
S^Ds vs MO
- S^D indicates reinforcement is available following particular behavior
phone rings (S^D) -> answer it(behavior) -> talk to friends(consequence) - MO alters value of reinforcer and therefore affects likelihood of behavior that results in reinforcer
slept in and running late (MO) and phone rings (decrease reinforcement of talking to friend and reduces behavior of answering phone
NCR
- form of antecedent intervention in which stimuli that are known reinforcers are delivered on schedule independent of behavior - not dependent on responses
- diminishes undesirable behaviors bc reinforcers that maintain are frequently available
- function as AO- reducing motivation to perform undesirable behavior
- reinforcers can be delivered on FT or VT
- schedule should be gradually “thinned”
- often combined with DRO- decreases adventitious reinforcement of the undesirable behavior that may occur in time-based NCR schedule
what can NCR employ?
positive reinforcement
negative reinforcement
automatic reinforcement
Kahng et al.
- SIB
- attention was social-positive reinforcement
- program: baseline- brief attention after SIB, treatment- NCR of attention started on FT 10” schedule and thinned to FT 5”
- results: both SIBs declined to zero
pros/cons of NCR
pros: robust effects across variety of behaviors, easy, with extinction then NCR may reduce extinction-induced response bursts
cons: free access of NCR may reduce motivation to engage in desirable behavior, coincidental pairings of undesirable behavior and NCR can strengthen behavior, as no behavior is being strengthened- controversial to call it noncontingent reinforcement
JB example
- parts of order missing
- check off receipt when in bag
- lanyard with Sharpie for each item
- check off receipt and if smth was missing then know who it is
- errors = training opportunity
- errors were halved
manipulating S^D
O’Neill
- increase use of trash receptacles and decrease litter at college football games
McClannahan and Risley
- increase participation in nursing home through materials and prompting
Mace
- problem behaviors maintained by escape from demands
- problem behaviors in response to task demands were less liekly to occur when task demands were preceded by requests to comply with easier tasks
- easier = high-p
- tasks that evoked problem behaviors = low-p
- preceded low-p task demand with 3 or 4 high-p task demands so more likely to comply with low-p
high-probability instructional sequence
effective antecedent intervention to decrease problem behaviors maintained by escape and increase compliance to task demands
behavioral momentum theory
high-p instructional sequence based on this
- when behavior is reinforced repeatedly in particular context that behavior and similar are likely to persist in context
functional interventions
extinction
differential reinforcement
antecedent interventions
- functional bc they decrease problem behaviors and increase desirable behaviors by modifying the A and C variables that control the behaviors
- nonaversive
- the first treatments used in an attempt to decrease a problem behavior bc they change the conditions that are maintaining and evoking the behavior
