The most notable schedules of reinforcement presented by Skinner were interval (fixed or variable) and ratio (fixed or variable).

• Continuous reinforcement — constant delivery of reinforcement for an action; every time a specific action was performed the subject instantly and always received a reinforcement. This method is impractical to use, and the reinforced behavior is prone to extinction.
• Interval (fixed/variable) reinforcement Fixed — reinforcement followed the first response after a set duration. Variable — time which must elapse before a response produces reinforcement is not set, but varies around an average value.

Ratio (fixed or variable) reinforcement Fixed — a set number of responses must occur before there is reinforcement. Variable – number of responses before reinforcement is delivered differs from the last, but has an average value.

Reinforcement processes were emphasized by Skinner, and were seen as primary in the shaping of behavior. A common misconception is that negative reinforcement is synonymous with punishment. This misconception is rather pervasive, and is commonly found in even scholarly accounts of Skinner and his contributions. To be clear, while positive reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior by the application of some event (e.g., praise after some behavior is performed), negative reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior by the removal or avoidance of some aversive event (e.g., opening and raising an umbrella over your head on a rainy day is reinforced by the cessation of rain falling on you).

Both types of reinforcement strengthen behavior, or increase the probability of a behavior reoccurring; the difference is in whether the reinforcing event is something applied (positive reinforcement) or something removed or avoided (negative reinforcement). Punishment and extinction have the effect of weakening behavior, or decreasing the future probability of a behavior’s occurrence, by the application of an aversive stimulus/event (positive punishment or punishment by contingent stimulation), removal of a desirable stimulus (negative punishment or punishment by contingent withdrawal), or the absence of a rewarding stimulus, which causes the behavior to stop (extinction).

Skinner also sought to understand the application of his theory in the broadest behavioural context as it applies to living organisms, namely natural selection.

Generally speaking, learning is producing an enduring change in individual behavior based off of the individual’s experience. A stimulus, either negative or positive occurs following the individual’s action. The individual will approach similar situations in the future in certain ways based off of the stimulus and the perceived “reward” or “cost” of making the action. For example, when one touches a hot stove range they are burned. Their body registers that what has happened causes pain, the person is now in pain as a result of touching the stove. In the future they will avoid touching the stove because they know that touching the stove produces a negative pain response. Past experience tells them that it hurts; therefore, they won’t do it. It’s quite a simple concept.

The same concept can be applied to a more complex and formal concept of learning, the “book learning” that we usually associate with the term learning. We learn how to read or how to understand math concepts because of the result we expect to come from it. We get an “A” on our test, our teacher rewards us with a gold star, we are proud of ourselves, our parents are proud of us, we know we need to do it to prepare for the future, etc. If we never received any sort of “reward” or result from anything we did, we would never learn. We learn to seek the good and avoid the bad. If a poisonous spider wasn’t something that could potentially harm us, we would have no reason to learn to avoid it at all costs. We learn however, that the Black Widow is in fact deadly, and as soon as we know we have something to lose by associating with the Black Widow, we no longer want to have anything to do with it.

In the same vein, we might learn that the Black Widow is deadly and then associate all moderate-sized black spiders with death or injury. However this would be more of an assumption or a conditioned response until we were given proof in another case that a moderate black spider of a species other than the Black Widow was in fact, deadly. Once we know that both the Black Widow and Moderate Sized Black Spider #2 are deadly, we can say that we have “learned” that moderate-sized black spiders are dangerous creatures and should be avoided.

A concept related to learning, but not identical to it, is Classical Conditioning. Classical Conditioning, as a concept, has affected our lives and the lives of nearly every animal on the planet for as long as we have existed; however, it was not until the early 1900’s that Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov made sense of the concept. It could be considered an “aha!” or “eureka!” moment in the field of psychology, because thanks to Pavlov (who had originally never intended to reach any psychological discovery, he was actually a physiologist) a major piece of the psychology puzzle had been filled in. We now understood how what we sometimes define incorrectly as “learning”, is a reactionary response to a stimuli in a manner that is often not conscious in nature. Thanks to Pavlov, it can be argued that all humans do is reacting. When we learn, we do it to avoid the pain of failure and to enjoy the pleasure of “success.” We learn to better our quality of life to match or exceed that of those around us. It can be argued that every single journey by man is a quest to minimalize discomfort. It can even be argued that the Samurai of Feudal Japan who would take their own lives rather than live with personal shame, were only killing themselves to avoid being in pain. We can associate whatever meaning we want to different things, but it all relates to what we deem to be comfortable or uncomfortable.

Pavlov’s experiment in of itself was not nearly so complex a matter. He tested it on the starving stray dogs of Moscow who became his experiments. Pavlov noticed one day that the dogs would salivate when they saw food. Pavlov wondered if he could condition the dogs to salivate by associating the ring of a bell with food. He would ring the bell, and bring them food. Ring the bell, and bring them food. Each time at the sight of food they would salivate, like any dog would, but unconsciously they began to associate the ringing of the bell with food. Soon, Pavlov would ring the bell without food being present, and the dogs would salivate. They had come to associate the presence of a bell with the presence of food, their bodies salivated because they were only reacting to what had been reinforced in them over a period of weeks. They had been conditioned that way without knowing it.

That being said, of course they didn’t know it. They couldn’t have known what was happening, they were dogs after all, but that doesn’t necessarily rule the findings as inaccurate. Similar studies have been performed on human subjects with similar results. If you associate the sound of a loud car horn with an auto accident that nearly ended your life, odds are you will be tense around the sound of nearby car horns despite the fact that the car horn noise itself had absolutely nothing to do with you getting injured and was a situational stimulus. It just so happened that you heard the horn as you were injured, which leads to associate hearing the horn with grievous pain and anxiety. A conditioned response, just like the salivation of one of Pavlov’s strays.

Eventually in time, a conditioned response can go extinct. This happens when it becomes clear to the subject that the associate is no longer relevant, or once a long span of time passes between experiences of the conditioned response. If you spend three years away from the honking of horns, there is a chance that upon your return to them, you will not be as dramatically affected by their stimulus.

The whole point behind these responses is survival. In nature animals have to learn very quickly what works and what doesn’t if they hope to survive long enough to reproduce. This requires dramatic and sometimes disproportionate responses to stimuli that can be considered dangerous, which is why you might have a panic attack at the sound of a car horn. Your body is telling you that your survival is at risk, and that you must avoid the stimulus.

But perhaps one day you are near a car horn, and instead of something bad happening, something good happens. You meet a lovely woman (the context is dubious, but bear with me) and the two of you immediately hit it off and have a great time. That might neutralized your conditioned response towards car horns, or even reverse it altogether, causing you to associate car horns with positive experiences. This would create a primary reinforcement, which in the terms of conditioning, is what you either want to avoid or seek. If it is pleasurable you seek it, painful you avoid it. A secondary reinforcement is not necessarily as tangible, and can be much more subtle. For example, money has no worth in of itself, it’s just a small piece of paper, but our experiences with money dictate that it is in fact worth something to us. Money becomes a secondary reinforcement, something that doesn’t necessarily have value in of itself, but we associate it with the primary reinforcement (money might buy you that trip to Belize you’ve been wanting to take, something that arguably has more tangible worth.).

The same concepts apply to negative reinforcement, but negative reinforcement works exactly as the name implies. It tends to be a less effective way of discouraging or encouraging a behavior, as it motivates by discomfort rather than reward. Reward tends to be more motivating to an individual than the idea of having something be taken away, whether it be respect, time, money, or confidence in one’s self. All of those things are taken in one way or another through various means of negative reinforcement, such as speeding tickets, jail time, reprimands, fees, and demeaning commentary. While these things might prevent a behavior, they are less effective and less healthy for the parties involved.

In order to make a behavior become deeply engraved into a person’s general behavior, the best way to do it is with repeated positive stimulus or “reward” over irregular intervals of time. This makes sure that the behavior is not practiced because of the expectation of a consistent reward, but instead the exciting possibility of one. By practicing football every day, you might not necessarily cause your team to reach states, but there’s definitely an increase in possibility that it will.

When it is reinforced inside of a person that their efforts will not produce success under any circumstances, what occurs is known as “learned helplessness.” When it is reinforced that their effort is irrelevant, they stop putting forth their effort. They begin to believe that their effort is completely pointless, because that is what they have been taught. Their consciousness tells them that they have always failed and that they will continue to do so, no matter if this is true or not. The person no longer perceives a chance of success, and will no longer work towards whatever it is that they have been shied away from. Even though they are completely capable, they will act as if they are helpless, hence the name: “learned helplessness.”

The father of this method is B.F. Skinner who introduced the idea of consequences into the behaviorist formula of human learning.  According to this method of learning, the likelihood a behavior will be repeated depends to a great degree on the amount of pleasure or pain that behavior has caused in the past. This fundamental principle is embodied in Skinner’s concept of reinforcement. There are two types of reinforcement, namely; positive and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement involves the impact of positive reinforcer – a consequence that strengthens responses that precede them. For example, a kid gets to play with his friends (or gets to play an extra hour of computer games on the weekend) when he obtains good grades in school. Negative reinforcement involves the impact of negative reinforcer – stimuli that strengthen responses that permit an organism to avoid or escape from their presence. For example, to avoid embarrassment in the public, the parents may just give in to their kid’s tantrum or ‘unreasonable’ demands. Over time, the parent’s tendency to give in may increase. This behavior has so called been negatively reinforced.

            In operant conditioning extinction refers to the gradual weakening and disappearance of a response tendency because the response is no longer followed by reinforcement. The extinction is when the previously available reinforcement is stopped. This can be sighted where a toll operator will stop greeting the motorist after some time when he or she does not receive any response from them.

            Research has found positive reinforcement is the most powerful of any of these. Adding a positive to increase a response not only works better, but allows both parties to focus on the positive aspects of the situation. Punishment, when applied immediately following the negative behavior can be effective, but results in extinction when it is not applied consistently. Punishment can also invoke other negative responses such as anger and resentment.

            Look out for my next article on Social Learning, another theory of learning.

Positive reinforcement is when someone try to improve a behavior in someone else. This is usually done by parents or teachers. Here when someone does something good like get an A or properly behaves correctly they would try to find some way to make sure that those acts continue. When this happens between parents and their kids they use this method to try and make their kids continue the behaviors by giving them either cash, toys, new video games, or whatever they want. But this can backfire as it can lead to the child or teen always expecting something in return after they do something.

Negative reinforcement is not necessarily the opposite. Here the parent may want a child to stop a behavior, example is fighting, and they will take something very precious to that kid that will try to make him stop fighting in an effort to get the punishment removed and get his/her stuff back. This is what parents would usually do when their child act bad, so they take away things that are precious to them. And this is the difference between positive and negative reinforcement.

Here are some ideas on how to maintain a positive classroom:

• Have high expectations for all students
• Recognize all accomplishments
• Involve parents whenever possible to any degree available
• When a student has a bad day, be there for them
• Maintain clear rules
• Set the example as a positive role model
• Greet your students when they come into your classroom
• Be sure there are clear consequences to negative actions
• Bring something that makes you happy into your room and leave it on your desk
• Have pictures of your family in the room
• Share good news in your personal life with your students
• Speak highly of students in the halls

By following these rules for yourself and also coming up with rules that are more appropriate to you, the classroom will be a happier place. This way, when that bad day does come along, it can be handled gracefully. Who knows, you may enjoy the positive environment so much that you forget about your worries.

Here are more Articles on Education by the Author

• Silent Ball Assessment Game for the Classroom 
• Standards Based Curriculum and Assessment for Teachers 
• Mapping a Curriculum Online for Teachers 

Florida’s process is composed of fifteen-hundred hours of supervised experience, two semesters course work, an internship, additional testing and a Masters Degree. Behavior Analysis started more than 20 years ago in Florida, I was fortunate enough to study/ research with one of the first people to have a full-time behavior analysis practice Dr. Jose Martinez-Diaz at the Florida Institute of Technology. Behavior Analysis is a practice paying attention to details almost obsessively. In Applied Behavior Analysis, we will ultimately get out of it what we put into it.

ABA is based on data, it’s the practice of reducing behaviors to numbers which allows us to manage and manipulate these behaviors. If staff are not taking good, accurate data then behavior analysis will fail every time. The data tells the behavior analyst where to go, like a road map of sorts. There is always going to be a learning curve associated with ABA. When staff become more consistent with applying ABA techniques and the individual served gets resistance (response blocking) displaying the problem behavior in getting what it is that he/she wants (function of the behavior) and is redirected to display a socially appropriate behavior to get what he/she wants in a more timely manner (extremely important) than the individual gets with the problem behavior – you see improvement. I can tell, without a doubt, if the staff are applying techniques consistently. In terms of the interview they want to see the data sheets to make certain that you didn’t contrive the service experience up for review.

Selling the idea and teaching the value of ABA is really the first step in the process of training staff in ABA. I like to say that emotion equals opportunity, staff need to be excited about the process, the ability to make their job easier, so they will go along with the process more easily. Once the staff see that the people in charge see value in ABA they start to apply the techniques more consistently, once we get over the learning curve they see that it will make their job easier and their sold. Staff motivation goes way up and they are left with a sense of empowerment through achievement. I over hear staff talking when they get to this point, and you hear a lot of, “I (ownership) taught x-y individual this or that new way (new behavior) to get (function) attention or food item, etc (reinforcer).” This is a time that I will begin reinforcing the staff in front of the house manager, residential director, QMRP’s, etc. as doing a great job (owning the results) and modified x-y individuals behavior. I’d like to see the direct care staff get more training so the boards can bill medicaid for a higher wage for services. Once these direct care positions are easier to fill, staff turn will be reduced, and a more stable environment will be available for the individuals served.

Modeling and over exaggeration are the key components of successful training. I strongly encourage, then demand over exaggeration when doing role plays and modeling the appropriate techniques for staff in working with an individual. I should look back at the staff at the conclusion and if they are not looking at me shocked then I know I didn’t over exaggerate enough. Remember, we are communicating with people (individuals) that have problems communicating, so we are always modeling and setting the bar high in terms of over exaggerating our displays of communication. Staff and the individuals alike learn much more observing while I am modeling than they do when I am sitting over their shoulder telling them what to do. When modeling you avoid all chance of rebellion or competition by the staff and with modeling no one feels like they are being talked down to or controlled. In ABA everyone is part of a team with one organizer of information that determines the direction, myself. As a provider I am always reinforcing the staff.

Staff are dramatically reinforced by a sense of accomplishment and by being recognized in front of their peers, bosses as competent. Remember, you’re dealing with staff that may of almost never made a single significant accomplishment thus far. Once we have behavior change down to close to “0” negative displays, its time to start phasing myself out but continue to reinforce the staff for doing a good job, always. If I fail to continue to reinforce the staff I will surely be called back because of some intense, new, horrific behavior that the individual just started displaying, usually about 3 weeks or so after I stop verbally praising the staff. The report is that because I haven’t been conducting visits with the individual he has began to display theses new behaviors. It’s safe to say that I have successfully established myself as a reinforcer for the staff and the individual alike. The idea here is that you should conduct two behavior plans simultaneously, one with the staff and one with the individual. Both behavior plans intertwine with one another and determine the success of the clinician.

When I apply ABA techniques consistently I see significant improvement in eight weeks or less. When I teach staff and they apply theses techniques on a more consistent bases I see significant behavior change over a period of sixteen weeks. Staff take longer to make behaviors change due to their lack of consistence during implementation and their willingness to give in to a behavior out of convenience. Reinforceing a negative behavior random numbers is known as “intermittent reinforcement”. Intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful type of reinforcement, this is better referred to as random reinforcement. If you reinforce someones behavior once out of every several attempts, randomly, that is the most powerful a predictor for future patterns. This is why when staff give in to a behavior randomly it is so damaging when trying to shape an individuals behavior patterns. But, if I block a negative display every time and redirect every time to a more appropriate behavior and give the individual what he desires in a more timely manner every time than why wouldn’t the individual want to make the appropriate choice. How many times do you have to go down the wrong road before you choose the right one consistently?