 Well, Mary Blackberry you've asked a question that I think pretty much every behavior analyst has asked at one time or another and probably Have gotten it wrong and there's a bit of a story here because as we went back and tried to find an appropriate answer for you We probably found out that maybe we didn't find this out. Maybe I won't admit to this But I think maybe we have gotten it wrong in the past ourselves So thank you for the question for several reasons and the question is can you make a distinction between pivotal and cuss behaviors? Like everybody asks that and I'm not picking on you I ask it We've asked it here. I've heard that question probably asked more About advanced level behavior analysis than than any other question. It's a very it's a very challenging difference Or it's not and I say or it's not because as we're sitting here trying to come up with a recording for you We kind of had an epiphany So that maybe it is drastically different Maybe it's the language that we use for the definitions that's confusing But the actual functions and and how things work the difference between cuss behaviors and pivotal behaviors are very very different So let me give you a shot. Let me give it a shot here. So I'm going to tell you something about a pivotal response first So if we go back to the definitions of pivotal responses, it's about learning one thing about what you know It's about learning one skill set or learning something about a behavior having your behavior slightly modified that then has an Effect on a different behavior that's untrained right so let me give you that example all right, so In I'm touching the table here because I'm realizing I have a good example So I'm have to switch my example bear with me because this is a great one All right, so in the wood shop when you work with wood you have to pay attention to grain All right So when you're smoothing edges on a joiner or you put in a planer and things like that to change the thickness Or to make the edge flat You have to watch the direction that your grain is going Because the knives that cut into that grain will do different things to your wood if you put it in the wrong direction I'll rip your wood apart and it won't come out smooth So I learned early on in doing high-end wood high-end. I don't do high-end woodwork in doing woodwork That really really really pay attention to your grain because it really makes things easier on the back end makes things every nicer You have much much more positive effect That's that was shaped in me right and taught by others and it ended up being shaped and so on so forth And I learned it and it's great and then all of a sudden one day I was in the kitchen cutting my chicken or beef I don't recall and I went wow, I should really pay attention to the grain It has a completely different effect on how the piece of the cut of meat comes out Then I noticed you can even do it with vegetables Do you see my point? I didn't go to class to learn how to cut vegetables So but I was in wood shop learning about something from my buddy less And he was very adamant about this thing and it ended up generalizing into the kitchen I'm going to go out on a limb here I'm going to say that pivotal responses pivotal behaviors are really about What happens later about that generalization right so what you learn there has an effect on another untrained behavior All right, so I think that that that the contingency then shapes you. I mean it generalizes right? I that's my understanding of pivotal responses now promise me You will not go back and rewatch our video our penny packers pedant video on pivotal responding So I think we did get it wrong, so we're going to go back and change that so now put that in contrast with a cusp a Cusp is a behavioral when you learn a cusp of behavior So you've learning a new behavior that opens up the door to a whole bunch of new types of reinforcement new sources of reinforcement You get to open a whole new world. There's lots of examples out there crawling is a great example Once the kid will learn how to crawl all of a sudden there's a whole new world open up to him When a kid who learns to talk all of a sudden there's a whole new world of reinforcers opened up And that weren't available before until they learned how to talk when a kid who learns how to attend When a dog learns how to attend for that matter doesn't matter when an organism learns these different behaviors That it then opens up the door to a whole new set of contingencies that they could not have possibly accessed Until they learned that first response So if you think of a cusp behavior as a door you walk through that door and all of a sudden There's a million other doors if you never open the first door you're never going to see the other million doors That's a cusp a pivotal just is I learned one thing here and it has an effect on something else just that's also very important But do you see the difference there, right? I think the definitions that we use make it more confusing because the definitions sound very similar But there is quite a bit of difference. So I'm trying to now get people to focus on generalization And there's another famous behavior analyst one said learning a cusp can open up the door to bunch of pivotal responses Think about that one for a minute. They do go together like that, right? I learned a new thing and that's going to allow me to have effect on other behaviors And so on so for bubble bubble all these different things. I think that's the key I think remembering pivotal as a special case of generalization, and I might be wrong with that But that right now seems to fit with the 47 different definitions of pivotal behaviors that we've looked up and the 183 definitions of Cusp behaviors that we looked up. It's not an easy distinction, but I think it's because the definitions sound similar I think they are very very different effects So go back maybe look at some other textbooks like we did look at some other videos like we did and see what you can draw from it But I think that's the conclusion that you're looking for. So anyway, there you go. Have fun Learn some new cusps and do different things For all you people that are still so damn prompt dependent that you need some assistance Here's your prompt like Subscribe share and donate we could really use the help. Thank you