The ABC’s of Behavior: Consequences
Hi there! How are you? It’s so nice to see you here!
Last week we dove in head first and looked into what could potentially serve as an antecedent and come before a behavior is present.
This week, we’re jumping in and looking at the tail end of our equation breaking down consequences and looking at practical ways to adjust them at home for your learner.
Before we begin, if you’re here looking for information on antecedents, be sure to look at last week's blog post (dated 8/13/24) for all of the antecedent discussion and strategies.
Let’s start with a review of a few things from last week:
As a special educator, decisions for programming largely depended on student evaluation and assessment results, performance in and out of the classroom, retention of skill over time, independence within a skill, etc. just to name a few.
As a behavior analyst, though, our decisions are based on data to understand the “why”, looking more clearly at two distinct things around behavior, particularly:
What is happening BEFORE (antecedent)
What is happening AFTER (consequence)
But again -
Why are these two things so important in making decisions for supporting a learner’s behavior?
AFTER - Consequences
Consequences follow the behavior and provide either:
Reinforcement (INCREASING the behavior - making the behavior more likely to happen in the future)
Punishment (DECREASING - making the behavior less likely to happen in the future.)
If you’re like me, when you first hear reinforcement and punishment the first thing that comes to mind is either giving in to something or having something taken away.
While this isn’t too far off, both reinforcement and punishment deserve a better rap than that.
REINFORCEMENT
Reinforcement as a consequence INCREASES the behavior making it more likely to occur again.
Reinforcement falls into 2 categories: Positive Reinforcement and Negative Reinforcement.
Positive Reinforcement ADDS something PREFERRED (something very much enjoyed) to increase the likelihood of the behavior occurring again.
Negative Reinforcement REMOVES something AVERSIVE (something very disliked) to increase the likelihood of the behavior occurring again.
EXTINCTION
No, we are not talking about the ceasing of dinosaurs - but we are talking about the ceasing of behavior.
Sometimes, extinction is used as well in this case. Extinction stops a behavior from happening in the future or makes the behavior go away completely by not providing reinforcement. Gradually, the behavior will be less likely to occur without the reinforcement it was receiving.
Extinction is truly a topic all in it’s own and deserves a blog post of its own, too. For today’s purpose we will only be having a brief overview of extinction and will review it in topics to come. (I will be sure to link back to this post, though, when the day comes!)
PUNISHMENT
Punishment as a consequence DECREASES the likelihood the behavior will occur again.
Punishment also falls into 2 categories: Positive Punishment and Negative Punishment.
Positive Punishment ADDS something AVERSIVE (something very disliked) to decrease the likelihood of the behavior occurring again.
Negative Punishment REMOVES something PREFERRED (something very much enjoyed) to decrease the likelihood of the behavior occurring again.
Now what do we do?
Consequences are the only part of the A-B-C contingency that we have the most say in, meaning, it is what will help us to make behavior change.
How?
Consequences can be adjusted to help a learner gain understanding of expected behaviors as well as novel replacement behaviors Like those mentioned above, depending on your goal for the behavior and the type of consequence used, you can support your learner’s behavior by either increasing or decreasing its likelihood simply by using reinforcement or punishment strategies.
ANTECEDENTS VS. CONSEQUENCES
Antecedents set the stage for the behavior to occur in the present …
while …
Consequences are what makes the behavior want to return (or not return) to the stage in the future.
Understanding the way antecedents and consequences relate to a behavior only helps us to hypothesize and better predict any patterns (or trends), see what the function of the behavior could be (Sensory, Escape, Attention, Tangible) and better define what the behavior is in both observable and measureable terms.
Be sure to check out our posts this week…
…to learn more information related to consequences including some really, easy, practical ways to support your learner at home.
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