What behavioral principles should educators be familiar with to understand student behavior?

Transcript: Johanna Staubitz, PhD, BCBA-D

To answer the question, “Which behavior is Max more likely to engage in?” we really need to think first about, well, What are his options? What are the two behaviors Max can engage in and how do those behaviors pay off compared to one another? We got to think about the differences in the quality, immediacy, magnitude of reinforcement produced by each behavior or each option, as well as the effort that each behavior requires. So if behavior one is cleaning up and behavior two is playing with materials—those are the two things that Max can do in this situation—we can start with quality. What is the reinforcement produced? For cleaning up, that’s access to playing basketball with friends. That’s a relatively rich environment. (Based on what little we know about Max, he enjoys playing basketball with his friends during recess.) And playing with materials, his alternative behavior, produces a temporary escape from having to clean up. So he’s escaping something that is arguably unpleasant to do. But we don’t really know whether one of those outcomes—playing basketball with friends versus escaping cleanup—is more important. But I think, in this situation, playing basketball with friends is probably the better option, provided Max understands what the options are.

So now let’s look at immediacy of access to those reinforcers. So when Max cleans up, he can immediately start playing basketball. There’s no delay there. And when he plays with his materials, he immediately escapes from the task or postpones having to clean up. But there’s the delay to basketball and also a qualitative change in the type of access to basketball he has. He’s going to be a spectator in this situation rather than getting to play himself. Next, let’s think about magnitude. Cleaning up produces 20 minutes of access to playing basketball while playing with his materials delays the cleanup task for maybe a few minutes. Finally, thinking about behavioral effort, cleaning up is probably the higher-effort behavior relative to playing with his materials. So, in that sense, Max may be more likely to play with his materials. But taking all of this together, there’s probably a better quality to the reinforcement produced by cleaning up: it’s immediate and it’s got a large amount of time to it (the 20 minutes of basketball). I think those things would probably outweigh the higher effort of having to clean up. And my prediction is that Max is likely to clean up and get on out there to play basketball.

Transcript: Johanna Staubitz, PhD, BCBA-D

To think about which behaviors Sebastian may be more likely to engage in, we first need to identify what the behaviors are that are available to him in this situation when he doesn’t want to play with a peer and there they are. So, in this scenario, Sebastian can either verbally request that the peer move on or he can push the peer. And in both cases there are outcomes and, looking first at reinforcer quality, both of these behaviors (a verbal request or pushing) produces escape from the interaction with the peer. So, from a quality perspective, the payoff looks pretty similar between these two behaviors. But there’s a difference in immediacy. When Sebastian asks his peer to play with someone else, the interaction’s prolonged. That peer argues with him. And when Sebastian pushes the peer, the interaction immediately ends. So here the deck is sort of stacked toward pushing, unfortunately. Then we can also look at reinforcer magnitude, and the payoff of verbal requests is that the peer returns a few minutes later. So the magnitude is somewhat lower relative to pushing the peer away, which produces time without that peer’s interruptions for the remainder of the class period. So again, the deck is sort of stacked toward pushing here; it produces a more immediate outcome and a bigger outcome (more escape from the peer). Finally, if we want to look at the effort of the behavior itself, pushing is a relatively low-effort way to get needs met. That’s why kindergartners and younger children than that really, really struggle with choosing to use their words over pushing. Pushing is easy to do, and it has the payoffs we just described. The verbal request requires more effort, particularly at Sebastian’s developmental stage. We know that he is still working on verbally expressing his wants and needs, so that probably takes a good bit more work. So, in this situation, I predict that Sebastian is more likely to push the peer, given the immediate escape from the peer and the length of the time that he has without a peer attempting to play in his space.

Transcript: Johanna Staubitz, PhD, BCBA-D

To answer the question of which behavior Zoe is more likely to engage in, we first need to think about what behaviors are her options. And here we can distill it down to two things: she can engage with instruction or academic engagement, or she can pass notes or whisper to her peers. And once we’ve identified those two behaviors, we can start thinking about their payoff and making comparisons in the quality, immediacy, magnitude of reinforcement, as well as the effort required for each behavior itself. And that’s going to tell us how the deck is stacked toward one behavior (academic engagement) or another (note passing or whispering). So in terms of the quality of reinforcement produced by each of these behaviors, academic engagement produces that five minutes of free time at the end of the period in which—and here’s the quality component—Zoe can access anybody who’s available via text or social media. So there’s a whole lot of connection available to her at that time. So I’d say that, given what little we know about Zoe, it’s a pretty high-quality reinforcer being able to access her phone. Note passing and whispering also produce connection with other people, but only connection with the people who are available in the classroom and willing to listen when she whispers and pass notes back and forth. So that may be a little more limited. So the deck may be stacked here in favor of academic engagement if we’re just looking at quality. So now let’s think about the immediacy of access to those reinforcers. And with academic engagement, the access to her phone and anyone available via text and social media is delayed. All of that is going to happen at the end of class, versus note passing and whispering are going to produce an immediate interaction with a peer. So, in the sense of reinforcer immediacy, note passing and whispering may be more likely, all else held constant.

Now let’s look at magnitude. Academic engagement produces five minutes uninterrupted of access to the phone and everything that comes with it. Where note passing and whispering produces brief instances of connection that may add up over the class period, but probably not to a total of five minutes. Finally, let’s look at behavioral effort. Academic engagement is a high-effort response, and that’s why we think so hard about how to promote that in our students. Where note passing and whispering, of course, doesn’t require as much effort. So, in the sense of effort, note passing or whispering is suggested, but looking across all of these different features of reinforcement, academic engagement produces higher-quality outcomes and higher-magnitude outcomes. So it’s better and for longer, and maybe that’s enough to compete with the immediate and low-effort reinforcement available for note passing and whispering. So my prediction is that Zoe will do her best to engage academically.