 All right, everybody. Welcome back. It's Veronica Howard. We're going to talk about negative reinforcement this time around now hands down 100% the most confusing procedure that people have the hardest time understanding is negative reinforcement So we're going to spend a little bit of extra time with this one I'm going to give you a lot of information about how to better understand negative reinforcement And I think to give a good kind of counterbalance to our conversation. Let's review what we mean by reinforcement Remember that reinforcement if we're talking about positive reinforcement We mean that an event is delivered or added something happens in the environment something new is added contingent on the behavior and thus we see the increase of that behavior in the future Meaning that when you engage in a response something in the environment adds something on you get more of that behavior in the future This one's relatively easy. It's straightforward. It's it's very intuitive for us to understand because In this way, we're saying the behavior is paying off It's paying off with that clear addition of a new stimulus sort of like when you get paid like you get a dollar bill or You get something given to you in exchange for the behavior Reason that negative reinforcement is so confusing for a lot of people has it. It's kind of the opposite What happens is when the target behavior occurs an event is actually terminated So what that means is I engage in the response an event something in the environment is either Terminated it stopped or it's prevented from ever happening contingent on my behavior and then I do more of that behavior in the future a perfect example of this right now actually I'm feeling pretty ill. It was just diagnosed with influenza and I have a history of really bad Upper respiratory infections and some problems with my lungs. So I have an albuterol inhaler albuterol is a perfect example of negative reinforcement because you're starting to have that asthma attack and you get that kind of like You use the asthma inhaler and it immediately Terminates the asthma attack. So you escape or avoid that unpleasant thing from happening And that's kind of the crux of negative reinforcement The two words that I want you to be thinking about here are Escape and avoid because when we're talking about negative reinforcement procedures We're talking about behaviors that allow us to escape or terminate a negative Reinforcer or an aversive stimulus after it's been presented or it's a behavior that allows us to avoid The delivery of that stimulus ever being presented. So remember name of the game in negative reinforcement is escape or avoid Let's do a few examples just to try to help clarify what I mean by this. So if I were to say Johnny here pays all of his bills on time so that he doesn't have to pay a late fee. What is this an example of this escape? Or is this avoidance? This seems to be a better example of avoidance because he's preventing the fees from ever happening If the fee was already there and he like wanted to talk to the manager and he tried to explain it So that maybe they would take the fee away. That's escape But it hasn't happened yet and Johnny's engaging to behaviors that it never gets delivered And there will be another video explaining some of the different examples of escape and avoidance So if this is something that you're struggling with be sure to check out that video Part of the difficulty with negative reinforcement is that most of our Incredibly powerful behaviors are maintained through negative reinforcement and it's really really hard to see Because people work so hard to escape or more importantly to avoid a thing that you'll never even see coming that you You actually never see the stimulus Maintaining that response right people work so hard All the time to avoid things that that never actually happened that this one is the hardest procedure to understand Sometimes we can see the averse of nature of negative reinforcement So perfect example of this is when you get yelled at right when you're getting yelled at by a boss or parent Or a drill sergeant then you know that your behavior is going to change that your behavior might increase You might engage in a different target response You might do something prior to getting yelled at to to change the rate of getting yelled at in the future You might do something better in the future so you can escape or avoid being yelled at by your boss so This helps to highlight a thing part of the reason why this procedure is so Low on the humane hierarchy and remember that humane hierarchy just refers to the level of intrusiveness of this procedure This one is really misleading for a lot of folks too because it has the word reinforcement in the title and people think oh well It's it's reinforcement. That must mean it's a good thing But no look actually Negative reinforcement is way down here with other behavior deceleration techniques like extinction Which we haven't talked about yet and negative punishment like this is a very aversive Procedure I mean look at this if we're doing stuff to avoid getting in trouble with people for working to escape or avoid the delivery of Noxious stimulus of something. That's aversive. You can see it's incredibly aversive and Because it is aversive control There's a lot of drawbacks to negative reinforcement for instance It's much less socially valid than positive reinforcement procedures. It's aversive Control people will escape and avoid you when you're using it We also know that just like punishment the use of negative reinforcement can be addictive. It can be coercive People will default to it one of the the examples that I like to give in class is That I know that I personally come off as kind of a Karen and I will sometimes leverage that power of like Let me speak here manager like I'll sometimes leverage that energy into getting stuff done but every time I do that I have to recognize the fact that I am using aversive control and Every time I'm doing that I'm actually establishing myself as an aversive stimulus Which means people are going to want to escape and avoid me because I'm associated with that negative reinforcement procedure because remember I'm pairing myself with an aversive stimulus and It's definitely gonna work But it's gonna work in the short term and it's only really going to work as long as I'm around To make it happen. So remember behavior change only changes enough Actually avoid aversive consequences. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of negative reinforcement is that even though it works It's a really poor investment for your time. I'd actually like to tell you about something called discretionary effort So discretionary effort. I think could be one of our best kept secrets in behavior analysis It's this idea of what you get from people who are Contacting negative reinforcement displayed here in this lower curve this red curve This is sometimes referred to as the have to do curve This is the amount that you have to do to escape or avoid getting in trouble And so you see that people really only just barely exceed the minimum requirements for not getting in trouble But like I'm showing with this top curve or this green curve when we use positive reinforcement We tend to capitalize on people's desire to want to do well people will give us a lot more They'll they'll give us way more behavior And so you see this disparity and the amount of effort or performance called discretionary effort when you can use positive Reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement. You were going to not only Be getting a much better return on your investment, but they're going to be so many other Better side effects that are produced. So remember you're not an aversive stimulus You are not having a person escape or avoid you. It's not addictive All right, so you're not getting coerced into using aversive control and positive reinforcement hands down all the way around a much better way to go Negative reinforcement, however, still occurs naturally So we want to understand it and I'm going to give you a few different examples of the way that negative reinforcement can develop through things like phobias we're going to talk about what happens when you maybe develop a kind of Dysfunctional relation or bi-directional relationship with another person where maybe one person or both people are negatively reinforced So come on back and we'll talk about that a little bit a few things. I want you to take away from this video First of all negative reinforcement Behavior increases to escape or avoid an aversive stimulus So a behavior is increasing in frequency, but negative reinforcement is still an aversive procedure And it should be used with caution. You're essentially Clinically making the environment worse so that people will do a behavior to make the environment better So you don't want to actually make the environment better Like you don't let me clarify. You do want to make the environment better You don't want to have to clinically make the environment aversive for people to work harder You want people to work hard and then reward them or reinforce them for working hard So though it's really challenging. It's going to be a much better use of resources It's going to have a much better long-term payoff to use positive reinforcement based strategies Rather than negative reinforcement based strategies. Remember, you do not want people to be working to escape or avoid you And if you have to use or you find negative reinforcement being used bear in mind that it should only ever Ever be used sparingly and just like every other procedure on the humane hierarchy You have to demonstrate that you've tried all other procedures first And you've used them with fidelity before you consider using this aversive control procedure So come on back. We'll do a few examples of escape versus avoidance and we'll talk a little bit more about some of the other examples of Negative reinforcement procedures. I'll see you guys next time