 All right, everyone, it's Professor Howard. Let's talk about extinction. Extinction is a commonly used behavior deceleration technique that we use to decrease the rate of a response. So when I say behavior deceleration, I mean, it slows down behavior. And I'm not saying it completely eliminates behavior. So we're gonna talk a little bit more about what that means. But conceptually speaking, remember that we often ask, well, why is it that people do the things that they do? People do what they do because in some way it pays off for them. This is a situation where it's helpful to understand the functions of behavior. So make sure that you're checking out the other reference materials, the reference guide about understanding different functions and how to use extinction. And also there's a video on the study guide for this topic that gives a brief overview of what a functional assessment is. But people do what they do because for whatever reason that pays off in some way. It could be that they get access to something. It could be that engaging in a target behavior allows a person to escape or avoid something unpleasant. Nevertheless, behavior does stuff in our environment. That's why we call it an operand. It operates on the environment. But what happens when that behavior no longer pays off? Well, people stop doing that behavior. And conceptually speaking, that's what we mean when we're talking about extinction. Extinction as defined is this procedure in which the event or the change in the environment that maintains a response is stopped. So the behavior no longer pays off in the environment and the rate of that behavior decreases because the behavior no longer works. When you're evaluating what you're looking at, remember that when we're talking about reinforcement, we mean that a behavior happens, it produces a consequence with the effect that the rate of the behavior increases in the future. When you're trying to determine if what you're looking at is extinction, ask, does the behavior produce a consequence? Was that consequence stopped? And what happened to the rate of behavior? So if the behavior's consequence no longer happens, but the rate of behavior increases, that's a different procedure. This is probably negative reinforcement. And I say that because the rate of the behavior increased. And if you have more behavior going on, and if it maintains at a high rate over time, it could be negative reinforcement. Caveat, this could also be an extinction burst and we'll talk about that in a second. You could also evaluate again, behavior consequences, behavior stopped, does the rate of the behavior decrease over time? This is probably more like what you're gonna see with extinction, although you have to take a kind of long-term view here because you will have an extinction burst where behavior kind of increases in frequency or magnitude in the short term. Make sure you're reviewing your reading in your study guide for more information. Okay, so extinction, remember that procedure in which an event or a consequence for behavior that's maintaining the response stops, the rate of behavior decreases. Speaking about the language that we use here, we say that undesirable behaviors are placed on extinction. So remember, it's a person situation. We're talking about this idea of behaviors being changed, not people being changed. So undesirable behaviors are placed on extinction and we're describing the kind of schedule effects that are gonna go on here. We'll come back to the next unit to talk about schedules of reinforcement and in an extinction schedule, it means that there's no reinforcement available. Again, we'll come back to that. Next, remember, behaviors, never people, behaviors are extinguished. This is not a situation of like concrete shoes where we're gonna make a person disappear or trying to reduce behavior. So is ignoring then, can you say that it's the same as extinction? So again, check out your reference materials because we're gonna talk about what's a functional analysis. We're gonna talk about how to use extinction for different behavior change methods. But when you're using extinction, you have to withhold the reinforcer. So you have to be aware that there's different types of reinforcers for behavior. Some types of reinforcers, some ways that behavior payoff can be things like getting access to a preferred activity. When I go to the theater and I give them my money and I go get it, it's a terrible idea now because everything's shut down for a quarantine, but when I go to the theater and I give them my money, they let me in to watch a movie. That could be a preferred activity. There can be sensory input reinforcers. For instance, right now I'm listening to some background music while I'm working. If for whatever reason, I couldn't get my headphones to work properly or whatever, I'd be deprived of that background music. I wouldn't have that sensory input. So I can be deprived of that as a reinforcer. Social interaction, for those of you who are joining us during the time of quarantine because of COVID-19, social interaction can be a very powerful reinforcer for folks. This could be one possible reinforcer. And if you are ignoring a behavior, that could be the deprivation of social interaction. So it could be one type of extinction. Reinforcers can also be tangible items, such as when I'm reaching for my phone, that's a tangible physical thing. It can be access to food or it could even be escape from something unpleasant. If my partner and I go to an event with other people and it's kind of uncomfortable or whatever, there's a look that I can give to my partner that says it's time to go. But if for whatever reason, he's not picking up on that or he's not attending to it or maybe he's ignoring it because he wants to stay, then I may not be able to get away from this uncomfortable social event, which means that my behavior of looking, which typically results in being able to leave, is gonna be placed on extinction because I don't get to go away. So those are different types of reinforcers. And you have to make sure that you are choosing the kind of withdrawal of the reinforcer that matches the behavior that you're looking at. So the question is ignoring the same as extinction sometimes, sometimes, but only if social interaction is the reinforcer, right? Withholding attention is only going to be extinction if attention is the reinforcer. If, however, getting the heck away from other people is a reinforcer, then me ignoring that person could actually be a reinforcer. So you wanna be very careful about how you're applying extinction. So just to reiterate one more time, the only time that ignoring an extinction are the same is if attention is the reinforcer. Extinction can be different things. It can be not delivering the food item, not going to the preferred activity, not being able to leave the party. So you wanna make sure that you're looking very carefully about what the function of the behavior is so you can make sure that your extinction procedure matches that. And you can actually get the proper deceleration technique that you need to have. Otherwise, you run the ethical challenge of if you don't know the function of the behavior, you could actually be making it worse by just ignoring the problem and you wanna be careful about that. So come on back next time we're gonna be talking about some of the ethical considerations that you have to have when talking about extinction. We're also gonna talk about some side effects. I'll see you guys next time.