 I think we'll start this out with the demo. We want the Hilbert chain, as you're going to have eight passes. I'm going to drive a bit loud! You're going to have to buy the function. We might be wrong. We're buddy, but not always a gentleman. I suppose, you know, you might be wondering why I'm out walking on a country road. You might even be wondering why I stopped my car. Me too. Actually, now come to think of it. Thinking, that's an interesting sort of pattern of behavior, isn't it? Come to think of it, I think we left off a while ago on our behavior B series with... Just hold on, I need to take that moment. We've worked really hard at CalPies over the last couple months. It's time we earned our reinforcers. In fact, in fact, I think that's what our topic should be today. I think we need to talk about reinforcement. I think it's probably the most important thing in applied behavior analysis. Let me say that again. It's the most important thing in applied behavior analysis. You didn't reinforce me enough. Otherwise, I would have done it like this. No, I think you guys have done plenty of reinforcing because obviously we're still here. Behavior analysis joke. So anyway, folks, the video, here, behavior analysis, applied behavior analysis, behavior beast, psychor, so much is in my head because it's all been bundled up because with the CalPies videos, the words have already been said and I haven't let them out. So they've all built up. They've got to come out really quick. Anyway, reinforcement. So reinforcement is a pretty cool thing. Like I said, it's probably the most important thing in applied behavior analysis to understand and to understand in gross depth, which is, of course, why we're here to help you understand the gross depth of reinforcement. Not that it's gross, but it is deep. Not as deep as the CalPies, but God dang it, I digress again. You must be reinforcing me for digressing. Again, I digress reinforcement. So reinforcement is one of those key concepts that once you get it, everything else starts to make sense. And in fact, if you want to understand behavior, you really should understand reinforcement. So let's just throw a simple definition out there. I know we've got like four definitions already on our channel, but what the heck? Another one doesn't hurt. So reinforcement is a process. Keep that in mind. We're going to break that down into reinforcers later. But again, I digress. Let's get back to the definition of reinforcement. Reinforcement is the systematic. I'm sorry. Let me try that again. Reinforcement is the contingent application or addition, whatever, or removal of a stimulus that results in the increase or the maintenance of a particular rate of behavior. So there's a key here, right? You need to make sure you focus on the behavior just because I give a rock. Doesn't mean that's going to necessarily reinforce his behavior unless rocks happen to be reinforcers for him. What he doesn't know is that flipping me off is a reinforcer. I'd have taught my children that. Oh, thank you. I'll stop. So anyway, the point is that we have a contingent application or removal. We're going to break into that in a little bit or in another video, but a contingent meaning that you have to do something in order to earn a reinforcer. The first thing that we think about doing is anything, is behavior, right? So the behavior has to happen in order for something to be reinforced. So that behavior can't just be magically appearing at a higher frequency. It has to appear first. So once the behavior is emitted, there's another key here. Once the behavior is emitted by the organism, then the environment can go, Yes, that's what we wanted. And he says, give me more. All right. And it delivers a reinforcer. There's lots and lots of types of reinforcers and they're different for everybody. And cameraman might need to engage in some negative reinforcing behavior by stepping my direction just a wee bit. So the car coming down the road does not hit him. All right. There we go. Thank you. Hopefully it's negatively reinforced and he doesn't swerve and kill us both, which would be a positive punisher and a really extreme version. But anyway, side note. So the contingent application or removal, again, we'll go back into that application or removal of a stimulus. That stimulus can be anything, right? If a rock reinforces you great. But the thing is that we don't know what reinforces you until you do things like reinforce your preference assessments until you actually go out in the environment and do some functional behavior assessments, all sorts of different things, right? And figure out what's really going on with these, but with the behavior. All right. So anyway, so we've gone into quite a bit about reinforcement, but there's a couple of things I want you to remember specifically. Reinforcement is a process, right? It has positive and negative. We'll get into that. So added or removed, right? It's contingent. The behavior has to happen first. Now, one of the things that people often get confused is reinforcement and reward. Reward might be a reinforcer, but a reinforcer is never a reward. Why? Because it's a reinforcer. Rewards, by definition, don't change behavior. They're just things that you get. So I can reward Brad with a rock that won't change his behavior. I could reward Brad with a pad on the back and that might not change his behavior. But if that pad on the back happens to be a reinforcer, then his behavior will change. So we need to watch the behavior, folks, in order to find out if a behavior or if something was a reinforcer or not. No matter how much guessing I do or you do, we're not going to figure out whether or not something's a reinforcer until the behavior changes or maintains. That's all we got. Now, of course, we can bring it in and do experimentation on it and figure it out that way. But really, just watch the behavior. So welcome to reinforcement. And we got a whole bunch more on the topic. So I think it's time for me to cross the road, because it's reinforcing.