Learning: process through which experience

causes permanent change in knowledge or

behavior.

Behavioral learning theories: explanations of

learning that focus on external events as the
cause of changes in observable behaviors.

The focus on the external is key…some people believe that there’s

more going on than meets the eye.
Because of an experience…

Winning a video game…

Lessons on the sound “th” makes…

Automobile accident…
Your behavior changes
for a long time

You play more video games

You say “/th/” when you see T-H.

You avoid this street.

Contiguity
 The simple pairing of stimuli and responses,
so that if they occur together often enough,
experiencing one results in another.
 Contiguity

Stimulus

Stimulus: event that activates behavior

Contiguity

Paired With Response

Response: observable reaction to a stimulus

Contiguity

7x8
Contiguity

7x8 56
Contiguity

Ed Psych guy with

theory on peer
learning
Contiguity

Ed Psych guy with

Vygotsky
theory on peer
learning
 Contiguity
When two things are next to each other, they are “contiguous.”

Stimulus Paired With Response

7x8 56
The notes that make a C major chord CEG
Date of the Declaration of Independence 1776
Gender of French word “jour” Masculine
Types of blood vessels Arteries, veins, capillaries
Ed psych guy with theory of peer learning Vygotsky

Contiguity is a great way to learn facts that are necessary to know. It is not necessarily
a good way to learn how to APPLY or use those facts.
Contiguity learning strategies: flash cards, drills, worksheets, repetition. One purpose of
the pictures in these reading guides is to help you associate ideas with pictures you can
remember.
Classical Conditioning
 Association of automatic responses with new
stimuli.
 Respondents: responses (generally
automatic or involuntary) elicited by specific
stimuli. Smell good food and your mouth
waters. You can’t make your mouth water
and you can’t stop it from watering.
 Classical Conditioning
(Pavlov’s Dog)

Unconditioned stimulus

Don’t worry about “unconditioned” just yet. This is the stimulus. What do you think
the dog will do? (How would you respond if you were REALLY hungry????)
 Unconditioned stimulus (US): stimulus that automatically produces an
emotional or physiological response.

Classical Conditioning

Doggie
drool

Unconditioned stimulus Unconditioned response

When the dog gets the dog food, it drools or salivates. This is an involuntary
response—the dog does not plan to drool—it just happens.

Unconditioned response (UR): naturally occurring emotional or physiological response.

 Classical Conditioning

As teachers, we can manipulate this response by causing the

animal to associate something else with the dog food. In this
case, there is a lab worker who always provides the food.

The lab worker initially was a neutral stimulus: stimulus not connected to a response.
 Classical Conditioning
The lab worker always
brings the dog food to the
dog. So the worker gets
ASSOCIATED with the
dog food in the dog’s
mind. This is an example
of contiguity learning. If
you experience something
good, you might associate
that good thing with some
other thing. For example,
if you win some money in
the lottery, you might
associate that with the
lucky rabbit foot that you
put in your pocket that
morning.
 Classical conditioning

Conditioned stimulus

Conditioned stimulus (CS): stimulus that evokes an emotional or physiological

response after conditioning.
Conditioned response (CR): learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.

Classical Conditioning

Doggie
drool

Conditioned stimulus Conditioned response

Because the dog associates the lab worker with food, the dog begins drooling when it
sees the lab worker, whether or not the lab worker has food. Similarly, you might put
your lucky rabbit foot in your pocket the next time you plan to buy a lottery ticket.
 Unconditioned and conditioned
stimuli and responses
 Unconditioned (think of unlearned—involuntary) stimulus is an
object or event that causes an instinctive or reflexive (unlearned)
physiological or emotional response. The dog food is an
unconditioned stimulus.
 Unconditioned response—is the instinctive or reflexive (unlearned)
physiological or emotional response that is caused by the
unconditioned stimulus. Doggie drool is the unconditioned
response. No one taught the dog to drool in response to food.
 Conditioned stimulus—is an object or event that becomes
associated with the unconditioned stimulus. In this case, it was
the lab assistant. If the lab assistant hadn’t been the one feeding
the dog, the dog would never have associated him with food, and
wouldn’t drool in the assistant’s presence. This is a learned
association, so it is “conditioned.”
 Conditioned response—is a learned physiological or emotional
response that is similar to the unconditioned response. The dog
drools in the presence of the lab worker (even without the food).

Let’s see another example, this time with people…

 You messed up. You were so
irresponsible. You are going to
flunk. I am angry at you.
You are in trouble.

Unconditioned stimulus:
•Get yelled at by a teacher
Unconditioned stimulus:
•Get yelled at by a teacher
Unconditioned stimuli: Unconditioned response:
•Get yelled at by a teacher •Feel bad
Associate teacher with classroom
Time passes…

7
9
7
8
7
APRIL

APRIL

APR
IL

AP
RI
L
The feelings return
when the person sees
just the classroom (not
the teacher).

Conditioned stimulus
Conditioned response
 Classical conditioning with
people
“Stimulus” is a Latin word and as a result, it has an unusual plural form, “stimuli.”

Unconditioned stimuli: Unconditioned responses:

•Get yelled at by a teacher •Feel bad
•Computer crashes •Feel angry
•Do well on math quiz •Feel good
•Get threatened by dog •Feel scared

Remember, your response here is involuntary. You don’t plan for these emotional
responses.

Note on reading this and the next three slides: Ideas accumulate. Be sure you pay
attention to the arrows & relationships on this slide before proceeding to the next.
 Classical conditioning with
people, part 2
Unconditioned stimuli: Unconditioned responses:
•Get yelled at by a teacher •Feel bad
•Computer crashes •Feel angry
•Do well on math quiz •Feel good
•Get threatened by dog •Feel scared

Info from last slide

New info
Associations:
•Teacher with classroom
•Computer crash with having used a particular program
•Math quiz with lucky rabbit foot
•Dog with street you were walking down

Associations do not have to be “rational”—it would make sense to associate studying

with doing well on a quiz. But sometimes you can do well on something without having
prepared for it. Or, you can discount your preparation.
 Classical conditioning with
people, part 3
Unconditioned stimuli: Unconditioned responses:
•Get yelled at by a teacher •Feel bad
•Computer crashes •Feel angry
•Do well on math quiz •Feel good
•Get threatened by dog •Feel scared

Associations:
•Teacher with classroom
Conditioned responses:
•Computer crash with having used a particular
•You feel bad when you walk in the
program
classroom.
•Math quiz with lucky rabbit foot
•You feel angry when you open up the
•Dog with street you were walking down
program.
•You feel good when you see the
rabbit foot.
•You feel scared when you see the
Conditioned stimuli
street.
Generalization & Generalization occurs when the stimuli similar, but
not identical, to a conditioned stimulus elicit the
discrimination
conditioned response.
Discrimination is the ability to give different
responses to related but not identical stimuli
Unconditioned stimuli: Unconditioned responses:
•Get yelled at by a teacher •Feel bad
•Computer crashes •Feel angry
•Do well on math quiz •Feel good Generalizations: you have the
•Get threatened by dog •Feel scared same feelings about situations that
are similar.
Discrimination: you only have
that feeling about the one situation.

Associations:
•Teacher with classroom
•Computer crash with having used a particular program
•Math quiz with lucky rabbit foot
•Dog with street you were walking down
Conditioned responses:
•You feel bad when you walk in the classroom.
•You feel angry when you open up the program.
•You feel good when you see the rabbit foot.
•You feel scared when you see the street.

Conditioned stimuli

Generalizations:
•You feel bad when you walk into all other classrooms
•You feel angry when you use any computer program
•You feel good when you see your lucky rock
•You feel scared walking down any street
Discrimination:
•You still feel good when you go to a different classroom.
•You feel good when you open up other programs.
•You don’t have any particular feelings about your lucky
sweater
•You don’t feel scared about any other street.
 Extinction: conditioned stimulus

Extinction occurs repeatedly without the

unconditioned stimulus and no longer
elicits the conditioned response. In
Unconditioned stimuli: other words, the original bad or good
Unconditioned responses: thing has gone away, so the
•Get yelled at by a teacher •Feel bad
•Computer crashes •Feel angry association between it and whatever
•Do well on math quiz •Feel good secondary thing you connected it to
•Get threatened by dog •Feel scared gets weaker over time and you no
longer have the feelings about the
secondary situation.

Associations:
•Teacher with classroom
•Computer crash with having used a particular program
•Math quiz with lucky rabbit foot
•Dog with street you were walking down
Conditioned responses:
•You feel bad when you walk in the classroom.
•You feel angry when you open up the program.
•You feel good when you see the rabbit foot.
•You feel scared when you see the street.

Conditioned stimuli
Extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus occurs repeatedly in the absence of
the unconditioned stimulus and no longer elicits the conditioned response.

Extinction Examples:
•A teacher makes an effort to make you feel good about his/her classroom. You enter classrooms without feeling
bad.
•A computer expert teaches you how to prevent the crash. You use the computer but no longer get angry.
•You fail a test despite the lucky rabbit foot. You no longer feel good about the rabbit foot.
•You spend time learning about dog behavior and how to deal with it. You walk down the street without feeling
scared.
ABC’s of behaviorism
 Antecedent: events that precede an action
 Behavior
 Consequences: events that follow an action

 People and animals interact with their environment.

Factors present in the environment (antecedents)
influence behavior as do consequences. For
example, a window in a classroom is an antecedent
to the behavior of staring out the window instead of
paying attention to the teacher. Scientists
manipulate antecedents and consequences in order
to study behavior.
 Operant Conditioning
 A form of learning in which an observable
response changes in frequency or duration
as a result of a consequence.
 A consequence is an outcome (stimulus) that
occurs after a behavior and influences future
behaviors.
This is a three-part process: behavior, consequence, response

Operants: voluntary (and generally goal-directed) behaviors emitted by a person

or animal.
 Operant Conditioning
Behavior
Operant Conditioning
Consequence (Stimulus)
Operant Conditioning
Consequence (Stimulus)

Learning
(Response): Behavior increases or Behavior decreases
Operant Conditioning
Behavior Consequence (Stimulus)

Learning
(Response): Behavior increases or Behavior decreases
 Operant Conditioning
Behavior

Behavior Consequence Response

You answer a question
You speed

A child misbehaves in class

Jimmy calls Billy a name
You leave for work early
 Operant Conditioning
Behavior
Behavior
You answer a question
You speed
A child misbehaves in class
Jimmy calls Billy a name
You leave for work early
Consequence (Stimulus)
Consequence Response
The teacher praises you
The police officer gives you a ticket
The teacher gets angry and chaos
breaks out
Billy ignores the name calling
You avoid heavy traffic
 Operant Conditioning
Consequence (Stimulus)

Learning
(Response): Behavior increases or Behavior decreases

Behavior Consequence Response (increase or decrease)

You answer a question
You speed
A child misbehaves in class
Jimmy calls Billy a name
You leave for work early
The teacher praises you
The police officer gives you a ticket
The teacher gets angry and chaos
breaks out
Billy ignores the name calling
You avoid heavy traffic
You try to answer another question
You don’t speed next time
The child does it again
Jimmy doesn’t do that again
You leave early again.
Consequence: an outcome (stimulus) that occurs after the behavior and
influences future behaviors.

Operant Conditioning
A type of learning in which an observable response changes in frequency or
duration as a result of a consequence. In other words, it is learning (change in
behavior) that takes place because of the consequences of one’s actions.

Behavior Consequence (Stimulus)

Learning
(Response): Behavior increases or Behavior decreases

Examples:
•You answer a question correctly & the teacher praises you, so you try to answer another question.
•You speed and the police officer gives you a ticket so you don’t speed the next time you drive that highway.
•A child misbehaves in class & the teacher gets angry. Chaos breaks out, so the child does it again.
•Jimmy calls Billy a name. Billy ignores the name calling. Jimmy doesn’t do that again.
•You leave early for work and avoid heavy traffic, so the next day you leave early again.
Reinforcer: any event that follows a behavior and increases the chances that
the behavior will occur again..
Reinforcement: use of consequences to strengthen behavior.

Types of Consequences
The type of consequence determines the learning. Reinforcing consequences
increase behavior and both the lack of reinforcement and punishment
decrease the behavior.

Behavior Consequence Response (increase or decrease)

You answer a question
You speed
A child misbehaves in class
Jimmy calls Billy a name
You leave for work early
The teacher praises you
The police officer gives you a ticket
The teacher gets angry and chaos
breaks out
Billy ignores the name calling
You avoid heavy traffic
You try to answer another question
You don’t speed next time
The child does it again
Jimmy doesn’t do that again
You leave early again.

Increase in behavior (reinforcement)

Decrease in behavior (punishment)

Decrease in behavior (lack of reinforcement)

Types of consequences
 What determines the type of consequence is
the effect it has on the behavior.
 You may intend for something to be a
punishment but it might turn out to be a
reinforcer. If the consequence increases the
behavior, then it is a reinforcer, no matter
what you intended. The teacher in the
example probably intended for getting angry
to be a punishment but it turned out to be a
reinforcer.
Types of Reinforcement: Positive vs. Negative
Examples:
•You answer a question correctly & the teacher praises you, so you try to
answer another question.
•A child misbehaves in class & the teacher gets angry. Chaos breaks out, so
the child does it again.
•You leave early for work and avoid heavy traffic, so the next day you leave
early again.
•You practice your musical instrument to avoid having a bad lesson with your
teacher

Positive Reinforcement: the process of increasing the frequency or duration of a

behavior as the result of presenting a reinforcer.

Negative Reinforcement: the process of removing or avoiding a stimulus

(consequence) to increase behavior
Notes:
Negative reinforcement is REMOVAL, AVOIDANCE. A behavior that removes the possibility of a negative
consequence is considered to be “negatively reinforced.”
 Punishers: consequences which weaken behavior or decrease their
frequency. The process of using punishers to decrease behavior is called
punishment.

Punishment: Two Types

Presentation Punishment: Removal punishment: a learner’s

learner’s behavior decreases due to
being presented with a punisher
(such as a bad grade which leads to
a student goofing off less).
Aversive: irritating or unpleasant
behavior decreases because he or she
is removed from the situation (or
positive reinforcement for the behavior
no longer is possible). For instance, a
child is given “time out” so no longer
gets positive reinforcement from other
students for clowning around.
Problems with Punishment
 Physical punishment can teach aggression.
 Punishment may increase defiance.
 It suppresses behavior temporarily.
 Punishment may make a student sneaky (avoiding
the person who punishes or avoiding getting caught
at the activity).
 Punishment causes negative emotions (classical
conditioning) that may get in the way of a more
positive relationship on which teaching is based.
What to do?
 Use positive reinforcement as much as
possible—e.g., “catch ‘em being good.”
 Use punishment when nothing else has
worked.
 Remember that behaviorism is a limited
theory, focusing only on external features of
human beings. Before creating a discipline
plan, become familiar with the other theories
of human psychology and their implications
for the classroom.
Reinforcement schedules
 Descriptions of the patterns in the frequency
and predictability of reinforcers.

Behavior is affected by how often and how predictable your reinforcers are.
Continuous vs. Intermittent

Continuous: a pattern in which every response is reinforced; you

reward all instances of a behavior. If you give a star for every single
homework assignment turned in, you are using a continuous schedule
of reinforcement.
Intermittent: a pattern in which a behavior is reinforced only
periodically; you only reward some instances of a behavior. If you do
not give out a star for every single homework assignment, then you
are using intermittent reinforcement.
 Interval vs. Ratio

Interval: how long between Ratio: the number of

behavior & reinforcement responses before you
get a reinforcement.

Interval: you reward after a period of time. For example, you reinforce (reward)
homework only on Mondays and you do not reward it on other days. Or you reward
homework on random days (we’ll see more about this in a moment). Interval is related
to time.
Ratio: you reward after a number of instances of a behavior. For example, you reward
every five homework assignments or you reward after a random number of completed
assignments. Ratio has to do with the number of times a behavior appears.
 Fixed vs. variable

Your interval or your ratio can be fixed or variable. If it is fixed, then you reward in
relation to a specific period of time (every Monday) or a specific number of instances of
behavior (every 5 homework assignments). If it is variable, then you reward randomly
in relation to either time or number of instances.
But why?
 Think about this: if a teacher rewards every
homework, then maybe you would think, “I don’t
have to do tonight’s homework—I’ll get a reward the
next time.” The behavior of doing your homework
might actually decrease. (Continuous reinforcement)
 Intermittent reinforcement is actually more powerful,
particularly when you don’t know what will be
reinforced (ratio) or when (interval). If you know that
homework will be rewarded on Monday, you might
slack off on the other days. But if you don’t know
when homework will be reinforced, you will probably
do the homework all the time because you don’t
want to miss out on a reward.
Reinforcement schedules: Why?
Continuous: offers steepest learning
curve (students learn behavior quickly
because it is consistently rewarded) but
behavior disappears when reinforcements
disappear. For example, students
rewarded with pizza coupons will read
books but when the pizza coupons stop,
the students for whom the coupons were
the only reward (they didn’t like reading in
the first place) stop reading.
Intermittent: requires behavior to be performed
occasionally without reward or without immediate
reward. For example, students don’t know when
they will get the pizza coupons, so they read some
books without pizza coupons. The teacher can
give the pizza coupon for every fifth book (fixed
ratio), randomly (variable ratio), every Friday (fixed
interval), or on a random weekday (variable
interval). The result is that the behavior doesn’t
disappear as easily.
Intermittent rewards and gambling

Gambling offers a wonderful (and dreadful)

example of how intermittent rewards
dramatically reinforce behavior. Slot
machines and lotteries reward on an
intermittent variable ratio basis: your
chances of winning are random every time
you play. What keeps a person pulling the
arm of a slot machine or playing the
lottery? The thought that “maybe this time
I’ll get the reward.” When the reward
comes, it is emotionally powerful because
of the efforts made that were not rewarded.
For some people, this idea can lead to a
profound addiction to gambling. Other
forms of gambling may involve more skill,
but random chance still influences the
outcome and the reward schedule still
strongly contributes to the maintenance of
the behavior. By the way, the house always wins.
 Extinction
 The disappearance of a conditioned response as a result of
nonreinforcement.
 When a behavior is not reinforced, it disappears. For example, when
Billy calls Tommy a name and Tommy ignores Billy, Billy is less likely
to use name calling to get attention from Tommy. Tommy
extinguishes Billy’s behavior by ignoring it. If you can get a kid to
ignore name calling (which is REALLY DIFFICULT) that will remove
the fun of the name caller.
 There are students who have become used to being reinforced for
bad behavior. Remember the example of a student misbehaving and
the teacher getting angry? For some students, a teacher’s anger is a
powerful reinforcement—it will surely cause those students to behave
in a similar way again. Ignoring their behavior may work. If it doesn’t,
the most important thing is to address it without ANY anger.
 Satiation
 Satiation involves using a reinforcer so frequently that it
loses its potency, or ability to strengthen behaviors.
 When a reinforcer is overused, it causes satiation. It no
longer is reinforcing and the behavior decreases. If kids
get too many pizza coupons for reading, they won’t be
able to use them or they will get sick of pizza so the
coupons are no longer an effective reward. The students
who need an external reward for reading will decrease
their reading behavior.
 You can also satiate a bad behavior. For example, if a
young child spits, you can have the child spit twenty or
thirty times in the toilet. Having to spit a whole bunch of
times removes the fun of it.
Antecedents: Environment
Antecedent: stimuli that precede behavior.

“Antecedent” is something that comes before something else. In this case,

the environment comes before the behavior of the students.

Stimulus control:
capacity for the
presence of absence of
antecedents to cause
behaviors.

Your classroom environment shapes behavior. In the above picture, the environment
makes it possible for the students to pass notes. They would be less likely to do so if
the teacher were writing on an overhead projector (and therefore facing the students).
If you have students sitting around tables, that environment encourages interaction.
Desks in rows facing the front discourages interaction. A large window may cause
some children to be distracted. Buzzing florescent lights also may distract some
students. A neat, orderly environment is less distracting to students whereas a chaotic
environment can engender bad behavior from students.
 Antecedents: Prompts and
cues “Comes before,”
as in the prompts
and cues come Stimulus, something that stimulates,
before the creates a need to make a response
Hints desired behavior

Prompts and cues are specific antecedent stimuli intended to produce behaviors
teachers want to reinforce.

Cue: providing a stimulus that

To make stronger
“sets up” a desired behavior.
Prompt: a reminder that follows
a cue to make sure the person
react to the cue.

In other words:
Teachers use hints to help students behave in a desirable way that they can praise. The
hints happen before the behavior.
Cues and prompts
What do you need to do
next? Show me what you
need to do.
Applied Behavior Analysis: the application of behavioral learning principles
to understand and change behavior.

Applied Behavioral Analysis

Identify target Establish a Choose reinforcers Measure changes Reduce frequency

behaviors: baseline: and punishers: in behavior: of reinforcers:

What needs to You can’t know if Make sure these are This is how you You don’t want to
be changed what you are doing likely to succeed. For know whether or not send a kid to the next
about what the is working unless example, some kids like your intervention is grade who still needs
student is you know what is stickers and others don’t working. If the to have tokens for
doing? happening. Count care about them. behavior is reading or whatever
up the problem Stickers are not a decreasing, you are your system is. Also,
behaviors over a reinforcer for all children. on the right track. If see slides on
period of time. Be sure to be it is increasing or intermittent
consistent in using the staying the same, reinforcements for
reinforcers and you need to think of reasons to reduce
punishers. This something else to do your frequency of
technique does not work (e.g., different reinforcers.
if you are inconsistent. reinforcers).

Behavior modification: systematic application of antecedents and

consequences to change behavior.
 Applied Behavioral Analysis

Identify target Establish a Choose reinforcers Measure changes Reduce frequency

behaviors: baseline: and punishers: in behavior: of reinforcers:

A student gets She does it three She likes video games. On the first day, she You begin reinforcing
out of her chair times, on average, You make a deal: for gets up once, so intermittently. You
during individual every day. every ten minutes she she only has two phase out the whole
work time. remains seated during paper clips. On the system within a
work time, she will get a second day, she month.
token (a paper clip). stays in her seat,
When she has three receives 3 paper
paper clips, she can play clips, and plays the
a new video game on video game. On the
the computer during free third day she slips,
time. If she gets up, she but succeeds on the
does not get the token fourth day. At the
and she cannot play the end of the second
video game. week, she is staying
in her seat during
the whole work time.
Methods for Encouraging
Behaviors
 Reinforcing with teacher attention
 Premack principle
 Shaping
 Positive Practice
Reinforcing with teacher
attention
 Praise good behavior and ignore bad
behavior…
 Except, when peers reinforce bad behavior
and your ignoring it is not working. Then you
need to address bad behavior.
 Make sure your praise is honest (the student
actually did something desirable), specific
(you tell the student exactly what they did
right), and believable (don’t go overboard).
Premack Principle
 The phenomenon in which a more desired activity
serves as a positive reinforcer for a less desired
activity. “You can play a video game when you
have finished your homework” is an application of
the Premack Principle.
 This is something to think about when organizing
the work in your classroom: if you are asking
students to do something that is not fun, be sure you
follow it up with something they do enjoy. Let them
know that when they have finished they not so fun
part, that they will get a chance to do the more fun
thing.
Shaping Behavior

Shaping behavior is the process of giving rewards for successive and better
approximations of the behavior you want.

How to get a goldfish to go through a hoop.

2. Establish a reward: Give it food every time you flick the water with your
finger so it associates a flick with a reward. (Your timing with the flick
will be more immediate than if you were to reward directly with food. Be
sure to give food after you flick when going through the procedures
below).
3. Reward the fish every time it goes near the hoop.
4. When the fish is going near the hoop consistently, withhold the reward
until the fish gets within two inches of the hoop.
5. Reward only when fish is within one inch of the hoop.
6. Reward only when fish sticks nose through hoop.
7. Reward only when at least half of fish’s body goes through hoop.
8. Reward only when fish goes all the way through the hoop.

I learned about this on a dog training video; I SAW the fish go through the hoop and then I saw the fish get MAD
when the owner forgot to give it its food reward (yes, fish can throw tantrums).
 Good fishy!!!!
Successive approximations: small components that make up a complex behavior.
Task analysis
 In order to shape a behavior, you have to
analyze it.
 Task analysis: system for breaking down a
task hierarchically into basic skills and
subskills.
 Task analysis: an example
Without realizing it, I did a
task analysis of bicycle riding
when I decided to teach my
little sister how to ride. I
planned all components of
this lesson before I taught it.
First, I had her sit on the seat
and use her feet to propel
herself, so she could start to
get the feel of balance.
Then I taught her how to use
the brake.
After she was comfortable
with these skills, I took her to
a gentle slope and she was
able to go down the slope
without falling (she had
learned balance) or being
scared (she knew how to
stop).
When she was able to go
down the slope, then I taught
her how to use the pedals.
She learned to ride a bike in
less than an hour. I learned
how to be a teacher (I was
probably nine).
Positive Practice
 Practicing correct responses immediately
after errors.
 Musicians know how to do this—after having
made a mistake, go over a passage again
and again correctly.
 It’s a good idea to do it in almost any situation
—spelling, math, reading, etc.
Coping with undesirable
behavior
 Negative reinforcement
 Satiation
 Reprimands
 Response cost
 Social isolation
 Cautions
Negative reinforcement
 A negative situation ends or is avoided when
the student performs the desired behavior.
 Students who turn in all their homework and
have an average of 90% on it can avoid the
exam.
 When a student has finished his seat work,
he can join the other students for free time.
Negative reinforcement
 Allows students to have some control (e.g., I can
choose to do my work quickly so I can have some
fun).
 Use positive words. Not, “you can’t go until you
have finished your work” but “when you have
finished your work, you can go.”
 Don’t bluff—never say something to a student that
you don’t intend to follow through with.
 Make sure you can enforce the negative situation
(you can’t keep kids after school who have to take a
bus unless you know transportation is possible).
 Go for action, not promises.
Satiation
 Requiring a person to repeat a problem behavior
past the point of interest or motivation.
 Preschoolers who spit: have them spit in the toilet
20 times.
 Silly behavior: this could be satiated pretty easily.
Have the students repeat the silly behavior beyond
the point at which they are tired of it.
 Be careful about which behaviors you attempt to
satiate. It will not work in some instances. It would
be hard to satiate someone who loves video games
by making them play video games.
Reprimands
 Criticisms for misbehavior—rebukes.
 Private reprimands work a whole lot better
than public ones (in part because public
attention to one’s behavior can actually
reinforce it for certain students).
 Remember that the goal is to establish a
positive relationship with students. Public
reprimands work against positive
relationships because they are embarassing.
Response cost
 Punishment by loss of reinforcers.
 This is like paying a fine. If you do something
wrong, you have to pay for it (e.g., a warning,
a mark beside the name, etc.).
Response cost
 PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE find some other
means of applying response cost than taking
away recess time.
 Your students with ADHD need to move
around. You will be setting yourself and them
up for failure if they don’t get recess—and yet
they are the ones who are most likely to lose
it due to bad behavior.
Response cost
 If you MUST take away recess, then find
some not so fun way of getting these kids to
move around. This will save YOUR sanity.
 A substitute teacher I know was handling
students who were doing in-school detention.
He took them to the gym when no one else
was there and made them run up and down
the bleachers for fifteen minutes. That got
out some of the energy and yet it was not fun
(it was not a reward).
Social isolation
 Removal of a disruptive student for 5-10
minutes.
 Time out: technically, the removal of all
reinforcement. In practice, isolation of a
student from the rest of the class for a brief
time.
 For this to work, the student has to be
removed to an empty area, not some place
where there are people to watch and interact
with (e.g., principal’s office).
Social isolation
 This is controversial. In part, it’s really hard to
supervise a class of 25 students and a student who
is being isolated—a student by him or herself could
get in trouble. Any room in a school that is small
enough to be truly empty is likely to seem jail-like to
school critics (e.g., on the 6 o’clock news).
 Highly imaginative students do not respond to this
method of punishment. They will just play by
themselves until you say it is okay to come back to
the rest of the students.
Cautions
 Punishment doesn’t create positive behavior.
 Harsh punishment might set up retaliation or
teach “might makes right.”
 If you are going to use punishment, then you
also need to work hard on teaching the
correct behaviors to students.
Functional behavioral assessment
and positive behavior support
 Functional behavioral assessment (FBA):
procedures used to obtain information about
antecedents, behaviors, and consequences
to determine the reason or function of the
behavior.
 Positive behavioral supports (PBS):
interventions designed to replace problem
behaviors with new actions that serve the
same purpose for the student.
What are students getting out
the behavior?
 It’s important to ask why a student is
behaving in a certain way. What is this
student getting? Attention? Escape from an
unpleasant situation? Something the student
wants? Meeting sensory needs?
 What does this student want?

Attention? Then how can we help the student get attention in a more positive way?

Retaliation? Then how can we help the student solve social problems more effectively?
Positive behavioral supports
 After you determine the purpose of the
behavior, then you determine the things the
student needs to be taught so that his/her
needs are met through behavior that is
acceptable in the classroom.
 These things are positive behavioral
supports.
Behavioral approaches to
teaching and management
 Group consequences
 Contingency contracts
 Token reinforcement
 Severe behavior problems
Group consequences
 Good behavior game: arrangement where a
class is divided into teams and each team
receives demerit points for breaking agreed
upon rules of good behavior.
 Group consequences: rewards or
punishments given to a class as a whole for
adhering to or violating rules of conduct.
Group consequences
 Your book tells you that an appropriate
reward would be extra recess. Basically, this
reward teaches that learning is not rewarding
in and of itself because the reward is NOT
learning.
 Find a learning-based reward—such as the
team that wins gets to choose which of
several fun learning activities the whole class
will do.
Contingency contracts
 A contract between the teacher and a student
specifying what the student must do to earn a
particular reward or privilege.
Contingency contracts
 There are lots of different ways of
establishing rules in the classroom and you’ll
be finding out more about approaches to
classroom management other than
behaviorism.
Contingency contracts
 Another way to think about classroom rules is
that they give students a message about
what the teacher expects. If you have a
whole bunch of rules about cheating, then
that lets students know that you expect them
to cheat. If you have rules that are all about
childish behavior, then students know that
you are expecting childish behavior.
Contingency contracts
 In my opinion (here comes the soapbox), classroom
rules even for young students should be based on
an expectation of mature behavior. The majority of
your students will live up to this and you will really
enjoy your class.
 There will be a minority of students who won’t be
able to live up to adult rules. Rather than “dumbing
down” the classroom rules for a minority of students,
use contingency contracts with these students. In
the contingency contract, you can develop rules that
these students can understand and follow.
Token reinforcement
 Token reinforcement system: system in
which tokens earned for academic work and
positive classroom behavior can be
exchanged for some desired reward.
 Token reinforcement systems
Only use:
 1. to motivate students who are completely
uninterested in their work and have not
responded to other approaches
 2. to encourage students who have
consistently failed to make academic
progress
 3. to deal with a class that is out of control

Tokens are a last-ditch effort. They take a lot of work and they don’t encourage
intrinsic motivation. But they can work in situations where nothing else has.
Token reinforcement
 You’ll have to do continuous rewards (in
other words consistently rewarding positive
behavior in every instance) at first to get it
started, then you can move to intermittent
rewards.
 You’ll need to make sure that the token store
is open fairly often and that materials
available are desirable to the students.
The fiddle fairy
This is my seven-year-old violin student, Anna.
When she first started playing, she had a hard
time practicing. Her grandmother made sure
she had an instrument available at the after
school babysitter’s, but that didn’t work
(although the babysitter was very cooperative).
So, we came up with the Fiddle Fairy. The
Fiddle Fairy comes to children who practice.
Every week Anna collected four stickers on her
practice record (4 15-minute session), the
Fiddle Fairy brought a little gift (thanks,
grandma!). I did two rewards in a row and then
began intermittent rewards. She now no
longer needs the Fiddle Fairy—she is choosing
to practice on her own. She has seen how
practicing pays off, both in working on her
Christmas CD and in being able to play for a
bunch of grownups at a Bluegrass jam.
Reaching every student:
severe behavior problems
 Token systems and group consequences can work
with students who have severe behavior problems.
 You must be prepared to be consistent with these
systems if you are going to implement them.
 Some of the systems described in your book have a
game-like quality (drawing criteria from a jar) that is
probably motivational and also allows random
chance to control things rather than the teacher
always seeming to be in control (motivational).
 Critique of behaviorist
classroom management
 “Flip a card” where students begin the day on green, move through yellow,
red, and white (with stronger consequences) is an effective classroom
management system. However, what is being rewarded is compliance with
the teacher and students are being extrinsically motivated to do so (more on
this in the chapter on motivation).
 Wouldn’t it be better if students chose to behave themselves in a classroom
not for some reward but because they felt themselves to be part of a
community they valued? (Remember Kohlberg?) How about students
becoming so absorbed in high quality teaching and learning that discipline was
not an issue and the teacher didn’t have to have a card system?
 What kind of environmental antecedent is the card system? In a sense,
because of its existence, it says to the students, “I expect you to misbehave.”
 You may find yourself in a classroom of students who have never succeeded
in school before and who need external motivation. In that case, the card
system may work beautifully. But add to that, the best possible teaching and
activities that get at intrinsic motivation. And dump the card system as soon
as you possibly can. After all, most job sites don’t have card systems or give
out points every day for good behavior… We are trying to help students
develop good work habits not just to succeed in school but also to succeed
beyond school.
 Putting Behaviorism Into
Perspective
 Behaviorism is not a good guide for instruction because
it tends to focus on learning small bits when we often
want students to deal with whole concepts.
 Behaviorism does not explain higher order functions—
anything that has to do with what is really going on
inside a person’s head (it is simply a focus on the
externals—behavior).
 Reinforcers support extrinsic (external) motivation
rather than intrinsic (internal) motivation.
 It does not teach self-control because it is dependent
on the teacher controlling students through reinforcers
and punishment.
 Productive
Conditioned General- Neutral learning Self-
Antecedents Reprimands Time out
stimulus ization stimulus environ- modeling
ment
Applied Good Operant Self- Token Rein-
Conse-
behavior behavior condition Prompts Respondents regula- forcement
quence
analysis game ing tion system

Group Self- Uncondition

Aversive Contiguity Conse- Operants Punishers Response reinforce ed
quences ment response

Behavior Contingency Observational Response Uncondition

Inhibition Punishment Shaping
modification contract learning cost ed stimulus

Behavioral Continuous Intermittent Positive Social

Ratio Ripple Vicarious
learning reinforceme reinforceme behavioral cognitive
schedule effect learning
theories nt schedule nt schedule supports theory

Positive Vicarious
Classical Interval Reinforce- Social
Cues reinforce- Satiation reinforce-
conditioning schedule ment isolation
ment ment

Cognitive Reinforce- Social

Discrim-
behavior Learning Potency ment Self-efficacy Learning
ination
modification schedule theory

Cognitive Premack Self-

Extinction Modeling Reinforcer Stimulus
modeling principle instruction

Presenta
Functional Negative
Conditioned tion Removal Self- Stimulus
behavioral reinforce
response punishm punishment management control
assessment ment
ent