 Hey everybody, welcome back. It's Dr. Howard. So as I mentioned before, we are moving into the topic on operant conditioning. We're talking a lot about how basic behavioral procedures change what we do, change how we interact with our environment. So what a behaviorist is really focused on are those behavior and environment interactions. The way that our environment supports certain choices or makes us less likely to choose those options in the future. Now unfortunately in our culture, in the way that we use language, we often introduce terms to people in a way that's inaccurate. So the chances are very good that you've come into this class with a behavioral repertoire with a verbal, you know, set of skills that is unfortunately gonna predispose you to get a lot of things wrong. So what I want to do is make sure that we talk about what some of these terms mean. Now in this video, we're going to talk about the four basic behavior change procedures. Positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment. We're going to talk a lot about what those terms mean and what they don't mean. So let me begin by what they mean. When we say positive, what we're talking about is there's a consequence, there's a change in the environment that involves something being added that wasn't there before. Positive means added, okay. When we say negative, what we mean is following the behavior, there's a consequence or a change in the environment where something that was there before is removed. Negative means removed. And when we're talking about reinforcement, we simply mean more behavior happens in the future. When we say punishment, we mean less behavior happens in the future. I'm going to put an image here on screen so you can see what I'm talking about. Positive means adding, reinforcement means more behavior, negative means taking away, punishment means less behavior. But there's a lot of misconceptions that folks have. Again, a lot of this has to do with our experience of the way these language, the way these terms are used in our everyday language. So the first error that I see people make is this idea that positive and negative or reinforcement or punishment have something to do with the value of the behavior, right? We label the term or we label the procedure based on the type of behavior that we're trying to change. So for instance, if I'm targeting what we might call an undesirable behavior or kind of a pain in the butt behavior, then obviously what I'm doing is negative, a negative procedure because I'm targeting a negative behavior. But that's incorrect because again, negative means removed. Or if I'm targeting an undesirable behavior, it's a positive procedure because it's for the benefit or to change the behavior. So that's one of the misconceptions. It's completely false. Positive and negative has nothing to do with the behavior itself, right? Positive reinforcement procedures, every bit is effective on behavior that we would consider undesirable. As it is for behavior we consider desirable. So these terms have nothing to do with our estimation, our judgment, our appraisal of whether the behavior should or should not happen. When we're analyzing these scenarios, you just want to look at what was the rate of the behavior before, what type of consequence occurred and what happened to the future rate of behavior, okay? The second misconception that we have is that positive and negative has something to do with the intention of the behavior change agent. So the teacher, right? So if I want to change behavior for the better, then I'm using a positive procedure or if I want to change behavior for some ulterior motives, then I'm going to use a negative procedure. Again, that is not what those terms mean. Our intention often has very little to do with the actual procedures that we use. Going back to the previous video's example, if I'm trying to teach table manners and a kid, you know, mouths off and talks back to me and I spank them. Now I can say that my intention is to produce a desirable change in behavior, but kid talks back to me, I spank them. What matters is whether the behavior happens more or less often, okay? It doesn't matter what my goal is. It doesn't matter how the child perceives the event. None of that matters. A simple objective analysis of the of the event and of the environment interaction is going to be what was the previous rate of behavior like, what happened, what's the future rate of the behavior like. Now it's also really worth noting that a behavior analyst is not going to suggest that you use punishment rate out of the gate. Just because these are basic behavior change procedures doesn't mean that you should use whichever one is most appropriate. We're going to say use reinforcement first, but I want you to realize that it doesn't have anything to do with what my intentions are in changing the behavior. That's not how we use positive and negative in these terms. The last and probably most insidious misconception about these terms is this idea that what kind of stimulus you use is what makes it a positive or negative, you know, reinforcer or a positive or negative punisher. So if I were to give you a cookie every time you turn your your homework in on time, then that's a positive reinforcer because who doesn't like cookies. But again, that's not the case. It doesn't matter what my intention is. It doesn't matter how you perceive the stimulus whether you like it or dislike it. All that matters in this is what was the previous rate of behavior was something added or taken away and do we have more or less of the behavior in the future. Now again, I'm going to put that image here on screen so you can see what I'm talking about. What I mean is when you have a positive procedure means the stimulus is added. It could be something that the person likes or doesn't like, but what really matters is something that wasn't there before as being added in and the behavior changes. If you have a negative procedure, negative reinforcement or negative punishment, then you have something that's being taken away from the environment contingent on behavior. Reinforcement and punishment simply refer to the change in the future rate of behavior. Reinforcement means you see more behavior in the future. Punishment means you see less behavior in the future. One last ethical note. I just want to remind you even though these look like they're they're equal in value, that they're pretty value neutral, it doesn't mean that you should just default to using punishment. A behavior analyst is going to absolutely encourage you to focus on positive reinforcement first. Focus on behavior change procedures that are going to teach a skill that are going to teach a replacement behavior so that you have a client allocating their responding to behavior that's going to pay off for them rather than behavior that's undesirable for those around them. So don't assume that punishment procedures are just fair game, right? You really want to be focusing on teaching replacement behaviors, reinforcing the client for giving you behavior that is adaptive for them, healthy for them, safe and desirable for people around them. You want to make sure that you're building those strong behavioral repertoires that are going to help them contact more reinforcement in their environment, not focus on teaching them to escape or avoid some kind of interaction with their caregiver that's really aggressive or aversive. So if you have any questions about this, please, please, please let me know. This is kind of a problem area for most students. So I'm looking forward to hearing from you.