Determining How Much and How Often
One of the keys of developing a successful reinforcement system is determining what level of reinforcement to provide and how frequently to provide it. This is often referred to as the schedule of reinforcement and is a dynamic process that is always being adjusted based on the needs of individual students. As a general rule, if the skill is difficult, reinforcement needs to be more frequent, more predictable, and at a higher level. As the skill gets easier, reinforcement can be slowly faded, becoming less frequent, less predictable, and at a lower level. Many factors bear on skill difficulty: (1) the novelty of the skill, (2) the environment in which it is being performed, (3) what other supports are in place, (4) how long the inappropriate behavior was in place, and (5) opportunities for practice. A visual of the concept of schedules of reinforcement and factors involved with skill difficulty is provided in Table 9.3.
An analogy to illustrate the importance of an appropriate reinforcement schedule goes back to a previous example of adults who are learning a new language. A beginning French speaker may be fairly successful in a low-stress environment with lots of support, such as at home speaking to a familiar individual with the reference book handy. This same individual may find that he or she cannot remember a word of French when in Paris at a busy intersection in an emergency situation and speaking to a native. Learning certain behavior skills is a similarly daunting task for many students, and just because they seemingly mastered a skill one day in a specific situation does not mean that they can do so fluently in all environments and situations. Reinforcement and support may need to increase at any time depending on a variety of variables.
Differential Reinforcement of Zero Rates of Behavior
Educators typically like to operate on a schedule of differential reinforcement of zero rates of behavior (DRO). That is, we reinforce students when they do not exhibit the problem behavior at all during a set period of time. The common problem with this is that it often sets students up for failure because not exhibiting the behavior at all is too difficult for them. Think of a student who talks constantly due to poor impulse control. To expect her to go from high rates of talking out to nothing in order to receive reinforcement is unrealistic. Another schedule of reinforcement may be more effective.
Differential Reinforcement of Lower Rates of Behavior
In a differential reinforcement of lower rates of behavior (DRL) schedule of reinforcement, the student is reinforced for exhibiting progressively lower rates of the undesired behavior. A good example from our experience was a student who exhibited a great deal of aggression. We used a DRL for both frequency of aggressive episodes and the amount of time it took him to calm himself once agitated. At the end of each episode, we graphed the time it took him to calm down, and he received high rates of praise and progress toward a special reinforcer if he calmed down more quickly than the previous episode, even if it was just by a minute. At the end of the day, we graphed the number of aggressive episodes he had that day; he immediately received high rates of praise and progress toward a special reinforcer if he had fewer episodes than the day before.
It seemed very odd to those witnessing the aggression that the first response after the aggressive episode was praise and tangible positive reinforcement, and we were often told, "You just rewarded him for being aggressive." Our response was, "No. He was reinforced for exhibiting less aggression than yesterday." Over time this approach was highly successful. We had him in our program for four years, and he went from being a highly aggressive second grader who could not recognize letters or numbers (academic tasks of any kind were common triggering antecedents) to exhibiting one act of aggression in all of fifth grade. Moreover, he passed all district and state assessments and was included in the general education classroom for a majority of his day.
DRL can be a powerful tool over time. As Plato wrote, "Never discourage anyone … who continually makes progress, no matter how slow." If you have a student who is seemingly stuck, and you are out of options, consider using a DRL schedule of reinforcement, meeting him where he is and highly reinforcing slight improvements in his behavior performance. It may feel unnatural at first and you may feel as if you are rewarding his misbehavior, but this often can be a highly effective intervention if you stick with it.
Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behavior
In a differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior (DRI) schedule, students are reinforced for behavior that is incompatible with the undesired behavior; that is, they cannot do both at the same time. This is particularly appropriate for extinguishing extreme attention-seeking behaviors that you do not want to acknowledge at all in order to avoid providing any reinforcement inadvertently through attention. The key to DRI is making sure that the inappropriate behavior is completely ignored by everyone in the environment and that the incompatible behavior is frequently reinforced at a very high level. This includes teaching peers to ignore and highly reinforce them for doing so (see Chapter Four). Very subtle facial expressions and body language can be interpreted as attention by many students with chronic behavior problems, making the task of complete ignoring very difficult. It is something that must be taught and practiced.
View Full Article
photo by:
Jen SFO-BCN 
10 Ways to Spice Up Your Barbecue
Happy Graduation
New Workbooks Are Here!
Add your own comment