Terminology Mini-Course

Reinforce, not bribe One of the most difficult concepts that many parents struggle with is the use of reinforcement vs. bribery. First consider when the item/activity is presented. Has a behavior occurred that you want to see more of? Is there something happening that you are trying to make [...]

“He doesn’t like reinforcers” Parenting is hard, there are all sorts of decisions that need to be made. There are times of frustration and, most of the time, there are a lot of aspects that are completely out of your control. Parenting with Behavior Analysis doesn’t mean that the [...]

Reinforcement is reinforcement only when it is reinforcing This may be the most important lesson when it comes to reinforcement. Reinforcement is only reinforcement if it works. I know, you are never supposed to use the defining word in the definition. It is bad practice. However, this is really [...]

I don’t need you: Automatic Reinforcement In the last section, we learned that purposeful actions or accidental actions of another person (i.e. the parent) can reinforce behaviors. Here we cover the fact that behaviors can be reinforced without any help from another person or organism, known as automatic reinforcement. [...]

Bad Reinforcement! Very, very bad- wait, that’s not right! Recently I read an article which summarized Applied Behavior Analysis as using “positive reinforcement to get aggressive behaviors under control.” Positive reinforcement-positive! Is that all we can use now?! Negative reinforcement is always discriminated against. Even Sheldon Cooper misused the [...]

Reinforcement is reinforcement regardless of the behavior… To begin the Mini-Course "Same Page Terminology", let’s understand what reinforcement is. Reinforcement (positive or negative) increases behavior. Knowing if something is reinforcing requires knowing if the preceding behavior is occurring more often. This concept is relatively easy to understand with positive [...]