There are 2 types of basic procedures for the development of new behaviors (according to operant logic): Shaping: gradual development and chaining: combination of behaviors already had.
Formal background of these procedures: Socratic dialogue: As a form of molding. The development of knowledge by wisely shaped successive approaches and the art of rhetoric (Cicero): As an example of chaining. The chain of argumentation and style are decisive for the effect to be achieved.
Formation of a compound behavior, from other simpler ones that appear in the repertoire of the individual, by means of the reinforcement of their combinations. In technical terms, each behavior of the resulting complex has a double function as a stimulus: Discriminatory stimulus for the next and the ereinforcing stimulus of the previous one.
DEFINITION STEPS TO FOLLOW
- Analyze the ceremony to be achieved: Specify the result to be achieved and the sub-operations that lead to it.
- Behavioral evaluation of the subject's available repertoires: Know what fragments are available for (re) functional combination (the same final behavior can be obtained through different behaviors intermediaries.
- Beginning of the chain: It generally begins at one of the ends.
If you start at the end (backward chaining), you have the result and the immediately preceding steps are established, and so on.
Forward chaining follows the order of operations from beginning to end. It is the most obvious procedure in teaching and is in fact the most practiced way, making it the method of choice.
ADDITIONAL CHAINING TECHNIQUES
Use of verbal instructions: Say how to do something, according to the known possibilities of the individual in this regard. They can also be written instructions or even gestures and signals of another type. If the chain already incorporates discriminative stimuli, these additional techniques are offered as a kind of supplementary discriminative stimuli. They can take the form of rules that "regulate" the entire sequence of operations. They can be indications only presented at the beginning or interspersed at critical points. Use of models: Show how the task to be taught is done. All operations can be shown as a whole, or partial aspects. Instructions and imitation are understood as prosthetic aids, to be dispensed with once the process has been facilitated: Stimulate fading.
The molding of certain links in the behavioral chain may be convenient, when certain operations do not appear in the individual's repertoire or are deficient. In fact, molding and chaining are conjugated rather than alternative procedures. The behavioral chaining thus achieved needs its reinforcement, at least in the initial phase, without prejudice to its progressive attenuation. Variants: Orgasmic reconditioning: Getting a certain sexual response to become controlled by new stimuli (Example: individual whose erection is only achieved with stimuli fetishists).
By making the stimulus change earlier and earlier in the course of the response, reconditioning is achieved: the new stimulus will acquire the functions of the old through a trigger, where the response is "hooked" to a link that has replaced another, and ultimately to all other "chain". Certain practices of covert conditioning: They consist of the recomposition of an imaginary ceremony. Example: Aversive conditioning of alcohol: from (the image of) a vomiting response when drinking an alcoholic beverage, it is changed to one of relief when withdrawing from it. Another example: Social skills training, where you see yourself performing successfully. It is about linking fragments that constitute an appropriate ceremony for a certain person. Carrying out tasks that require cooperation between several people: We speak of "chain work". The fragments of the final realization are behaviors of each person involved.
FIELDS OF APPLICATION AND EXAMPLES OF CHAINING
The application is of interest on the assumption that the fragments are available for the new desired behavioral unit.
- Development of domestic autonomy skills: dressing, eating, personal cleaning, etc. The individual, perhaps, can perform many subunits of these practices, but not coordinated as required by the actual task. What is missing is their conjunction.
- Development of verbal fluency: In special language education, when it comes to achieving an integrated diction of sounds. Certain forms of help in learning to read, it is about having the content of the text in such a way that its discourse follows logic. Treatment of stuttering, when certain verbal sequences are arranged in such a way as to facilitate certain difficult dictions (a word that is problematic would be chained to a sequence such that previous and subsequent words modulate their pronunciation).
- Academic instruction: Organization of a speech (written or spoken) based on the intended effects. The chaining of the arguments is important. Writing a letter or having a conversation in which you have to introduce a certain sensitive topic, require some care in the chain of speech. A formal assumption is the "composition" of an article in a scientific journal, or a chapter in a book. It is a series of contents that have to be organized according to a scheme. Composition consists of distributing the content into its parts and connecting them according to the scheme.
- Miscellaneous: Strategy sometimes followed in selective mutism, at least when non-verbal communication sequences have been created in which speech is interspersed at a given moment. Memory rehabilitation in a person who has suffered neurological damage: It is about alleviating the problems due to memory impairment, rather than its restoration. For example, organizing the environment and practicing certain activities, in such a way that they build (chain) a simplified but meaningful ceremony of daily life. The regularized environment, together with the task rehearsals, will reconstruct a "motor memory".
CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF CHAINING
These techniques are some of the strongest in behavior modification, and therefore resistant to criticism.
OBSERVATIONS ON 3 CRITICAL ASPECTS
related to its professional application: Your application may be too formalized, because its professional use has been taken as an extension of the laboratory, that is, applied analysis has inherited the rigors of experimental analysis.
The problem arises when professionals are in charge of applying the procedure, and the difficulty of provide sound training in operating procedures, which is sometimes not possible and you have to adhere to the worldly practices.
Consequently, it would not be so much to bring the laboratory to the applied site, but to (re) construct the techniques at the scale of the context in which the problem occurs.
The risk: vulgarization of the procedure.
The operational definition of the terms: What is decisive is the function rather than the form of the conduct, and it may happen that the operational definition falls on the form to the detriment of the function. Reinforcement in everyday life: A reinforcement program should be designed that is compatible with everyday uses. Better knowledge (more research) of the "laws" of reinforcement in ordinary social contexts would be needed.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
