Lec 13 Applying Extinction Willy 54 man is a new resident. Issue is whether he complies with instruction by staff mem.

He is gender specific. If male ask, he comply but with female, he combat and make sexist comments. Its a macro behavior. The female staff member explains him and thus he receive their attention which is getting reinforced. Staff removed this reinforcement by not paying attention. Examples: Child tantrum behavior- engaging in maladaptive act Young child run from street. The mother offers a tangible reward like Popsicle to return. Child with autism flicks his hands in front of his head. The response is not social. He is providing himself with a visual reinforcer. We wanna address that why? Because these autistic children are socially detaching themselves from others. As they become alienated, they get less involved in daily activities. Dog running after someone. Person gets away from dog and the fear diminishes. Patient calls nursing staff again and again without any medical issue. That is quite irritating bcz staff can use that time in doing something more productive. Worker breaks the assembly line so he can get to eat the food. Never make assumption about reinforcer for a person or situation. Ex. Iwata reinforcements for 3 children were different; one was getting reinforced by attention, other was by teachers demands, and last one by sensory stimulus. Can u actually eliminate the reinforcement? Is it under your control? maybe not. If you dont have the excess to that variable then dont use extinction. Problem behavior can change in multitude ways e.g. extinction burst or self injurious behavior with SIB occurs when using extinction. So we need to be careful & make sure that its not dangerous/unsafe. Can you tolerate extinction burst? You need to be very realistic. If you are dealing with child, the volume goes double and child might throw things around the house. This could be over whelming. Can you actually be consistent? This is very imp. When you are not consistent, then its intermittent reinforcement. If one person starts to reinforce a behavior, you are implementing reinforcement again. This makes the behavior more resilient in future. We wanna know how often behavior occurs, definition of this behavior and what behavior modification is appropriate to use. Make sure you use reliable data collection method. The method is going to capture every level of behavior.

Use a decent window of time (certain about of days). Consider where the behavior actually occurs? With parents, grandma or at park. Success of this process relies in steps. If you are not sure about something, then it might not work. There may be two reinforcers involved. You can separate those two and eliminate them. If you eliminate one, and didnt do the other, then behavior is not gonna go away. Consider looking at the schedule of reinforcement. If schedule reinforcement is intermittent, then it is gonna be slow process to extinct the behavior. Where if it is continues, then it will be faster. In some situations, if you want your procedure to be effective, you wanna employ continues reschedule; one on one. So Its faster to go away. Also consider if its injurious or not. Differential reinforcement- use an alternative behavior and replace it with desirable behavior. Applying Extinction to problems presented earlier: Willy female staff make a request, willy is told that he will get attention only if he doesnt make the sexist comments. So if he is getting the same reinforcement that he used to get with problem behavior, procedure is more likely to be successful. Promote generalization in all cases. Extinction must be used at all time. Child tantrum behavior parent doesnt let the child escape the behavior. If the kid make an excuse of being sick then first make sure he is not sick and then go on to implement the procedure. Child runs on the street. Mom shud not offer the reinforcement. Sometime withholding the reinforcement (Popsicle) does not work bcz child is already is on the street. So extinction might not be possible. For autistic child who flicks the hand in front of eyes. We can turn off lights so the flicking behavior decrease. It works as shown in many research papers. Person running away from dog. Person gets away from dog and the fear diminishes. In this case extinction may not be effective because otherwise the dog will attack the person. Patient calling nurse staff without a medical reason. Extinction could occur if nurse check on patient occasionally and doesnt come when patient pushes the button. But wht if the person actually needs the medical attention???(Ethical issue). One solution could be that when they pushes the button, dont go inside the room but just make sure that pt is ok. Worker breaking the assembly line when this problem behavior occurs, make the worker work on another assembly line and dont reinforce the eating food.