Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sec1 1
Sec1 1
We could say that A) the party set the occasion to, B) tell a joke and C)
people laughed. And when people laugh at the joke in the context of a
party, it will become more likely that jokes will be told more often in that
context. Notice on the figure below that an arrow has been added to show
that relationship between the consequence and the antecedent. The ABCs
are not Linear. Not just A then B then C. It is important to understand
that they are fully connected with a feedback loop of sorts. This feedback
loop is always there because the relationship is always there. However,
we will not always explicitly put it in our diagrams for the sake of
simplicity. We will use it primarily when we are emphasizing the full
ABC relationship.
You may have noticed that given the Antecedent and the Consequence
the behavior is fairly obvious. It would appear if you know the
relationship between the Antecedent and the Consequence, the Behavior
is clear. This is not to say that there is only one behavior a person could
emit at the market to bring home food. They could buy it with change,
buy it with a hundred dollar bill, or buy it with food stamps. They could
also steal it, trade for it, go dumpster diving, or work for it for that matter.
Even so, knowing the Antecedent and the Consequence makes the
Behavior fairly predictable. This is what makes behavior modification so
powerful because in many situations we can control the antecedents and
the consequences. Often antecedents directly refer or relate to the
environment. Thus we say that controlling the environment controls the
behavior.
Because behaviors can be dictated by the environment, some people
will even go as far as saying that the behaviors exist in the environment.
We will discuss environments and how they elicit (bring about) behaviors
in later chapters.
Notice now, when you fill in the blanks for the consequence, a wide
variety of behaviors can occur.
ii
During this class you will become more aware of the behaviors you
emit. Think of three behaviors you have emitted today. Write those in the
boxes below. Once you have your behavior written down, fill out the
ABCs for each behavior.
In summary:
The ABCs are the building blocks
Understanding the ABCs is the
of behavior.
basis of behavior modification.
Imagine as a consequence of being at the market you were arrested. What was the behavior?
Imagine while hunting the consequence was receiving an award? What would the behaviors have
been for that to occur as a consequence?