Self-directed behaviour: Watson,Tharp 1977 Edition

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS THE 1977 EDITION AND NOT THE 2006 ON THE READING LIST, although parts have been updated to reflect

Self-directed behaviour

Contents
Chapter 1 Adjustment, Personal goals and self-direction    6
Adjustment as a value judgement    6
Behaviours and situations    6
Trait Theory    6
The medical model    6
Achieving self-direction    7
Behaviour is a function of the environment    7
Behaviour is learned    7
Achieving self-direction    7
Self-Direction and Will Power    7
The process of self-direction    7
Summary    8
Chapter 2 Self-directed behaviour    8
Steps in self-directed change    8
Applying principles    9
Adjusting and changing plans    9
Does a self-change plan really work?    9
Summary    9
Chapter 3 Specifying the goal    9
Ideas that interfere with specifying the goal    9
Tactics for specifying behaviours in situations    10
Make a list of concrete examples    10
Ask yourself what you would be dong if you achieved your goal    10
Phrase the goal as behaviours in-situations    10
Become an Observer    10
When the problem is non-performance of behaviour    10
See what you are doing in a target situation    10
See what you should be doing in the target situation    10
When your goal is not a behaviour one    11
Successive approximations to a goal    11
Changing plans as your self-understanding deepens    11
For more complex goals where do you begin?    12
Has the goal been correctly identified?    12
How to Increase your self-efficacy beliefs    12
Becoming optimistic    12
Stages in your thoughts about changing    12
Relate your target goals to life goals    12
Summary    12
Chapter 4 Self-knowledge: Observation and recording    13
Discovering the effects of situations    13
Antecedents and consequences    13
Structured diaries for antecedents and consequences    14
Frequency recording    14
Rating scales    15
Combining techniques    15
The reactive effects of self-observation    15
Dealing with problems in getting records    15
Building record keeping into your pattern of habitual behaviours    15
Self-recorded data and planning for change    16
Difficulty in recording data    16
Aids to recording data    16
Summary    16
Chapter 5.1 The principles of self-regulation theory and practice    17
Regulation theory    17
Social constructivism    17
Development of language regulation    17
Chapter 5.2 Behaviour-environment relationships    18
Effects of consequences    18
Operant behaviours    18
Reinforcers    18
Escape and avoidance    19
Reinforcing consequences in your life    19
Punishment    19
Extinction    19
Effects of antecedents    19
Stimulus Control    20
Respondent behaviour    20
Respondent conditioning    20
Emotional Conditioning    20
Modelling    20
Summary    20
Chapter 5.3 Antecedents    21
Modifying old antecedents    21
Chapter 6 Consequences    22
Arranging consequences    22
Contingency    22
Direct observation of reinforcing consequences    22
Consummatory responses    22
Intermittent reinforcement and avoidance behaviours    22
Cataloguing and selecting reinforcers    22
Positive reinforcers    22
The Premack Principle    23
Imagined reinforcers    23
How to use reinforcement    23
Rapid reinforcement    23
Reinforcement for thoughts and feelings    23
Avoiding problems in reinforcement    23
Sharing reinforcers    23
Using others to dispense the reinforcement    23
Extinction    24
Self-punishment    24
Why punishment alone is insufficient    24
The loss of positive reinforcement as a punishment    24
Precommitment punishment    24
Summary    25
Chapter 7 Developing new behaviours    25
Shaping: The reinforcement of successive approximations    25
How shaping works in self-directed behaviour    26
Using Models to set shaping steps    26
Problems in shaping    26
Plateaus    26
Cheating    26
Losing Will Power    26
Incompatible behaviour    26
Relieving depression with incompatible thoughts    27
Behaviours incompatible with anxiety and tension    27
Relaxation    27
Developing new behaviours through rehearsal    27
Developing new behaviours through modelling    28
Summary    28
Chapter 8 Antecedents    30
Identifying Antecedents    30
Controlling and rearranging antecedents    30
Consummatory problems    30
Interpersonal problems    30
Narrowing antecedents    30
Breaking up chains    30
Changing the chain of events    31
Arranging new antecedents    31
Creating stimulus generalisation    31
Precommitment and programming your social environment    31
Self-instructions    31
Summary    31
Chapter 9 Planning for change    32
The features of a good plan    32
Rules    32
Goals and sub goals    32
Feedback gathering    32
The contract    33
Chapter 10 Is it working? Analysing the data    33
Chapter 11 Termination    33
Chapter Summaries    33
Chapter 1    33
Chapter 2    34
Chapter 3    34
Chapter 4    35
Chapter 5    36
Chapter 6    36
Chapter 7    37
Chapter 8    38
Summary    39
Key Concepts    40

Chapter 1 Adjustment, Personal goals and self-direction

To adjust is a combination of harmonising your inner values and harmonising self to the world. In other words if you want to be a pop star but the environment is showing no signs that you can be, then maybe this is an unrealisable dream.  Adjustment to the environment is a dynamic one as self and environment continually change.  The outcome of this dynamic relationship is that plans must be modified in light of environmental change and plans may be replaced on the basis of environmental change.  The voyage, that the adjustment of the rudder enables, may either be fulfilling in itself, or get you somewhere where you want to get to. Personal adjustment is the achievement of personal goals.

Adjustment as a value judgement

All decisions for life process and purpose are value judgements.  Sometimes it is difficult to see this, as you have been taught your values as true, they have come from your societal group and you are still within that group. However of course, there are other groups who have different values, you just weren’t born into them.  Whilst there may be some universal values, love, happiness and freedom, what these specifically mean may well differ markedly from one society to another.

There is a sense when non-achievement of goals is synonymous with maladjustment and is a target of therapy.  These goals are always contextual, so if a person wants to be more assertive, they might find it is only in certain types of situation that this comes up. Likewise with depression, if someone won the lottery, or was asked to star in a new film then these situations would alleviate the depression. Distress therefore is a situational issue.  The distress being caused by the interaction of our behaviour with a situation.

Behaviours and situations

People often explain their behaviours by saying that’s their character, which means they have a consistent way of doing things, although research shows that they overestimate the consistency and underestimate the effect of the situation

Trait Theory

This is that people have persistent characters that explains behaviour, therefore the situation has little influence. In other words behaviour can be explained by an inner cause.

However personality is a label that has been given from the behaviour in a number of situations.  Has the label added anything to explain the behaviour, well a little to stop thinking on the matter, give a bit more certainty?  The difficulty with labels is that they are abstract and cannot be changed, if you want to change the list of behaviours that has led to the label then that seems more useful.  However if you closely analyse this list you will as mentioned above usually find an overestimation of consistency and an underestimation of the interrelation between agent and the environment.

The medical model

Sees mental distress in the same paradigm as physical distress. There is an inner cause, a chemical imbalance, which causes an outer problem, behaviour. The trouble with the medical model is it doesn’t explain striving towards goals. You could have a goal of having more friends, or working in a hospital, and the medical model struggles, both with the stating of the goal, or indeed the struggle to attain it, what chemical sets goals, what chemical enables the effective movement towards it, and much of psychotherapy is the movement towards goals. If you are not achieving your goal then does this mean you have a disease? The medical model ignores the interaction between agent and the environment.

Achieving self-direction

A goal is specified in terms of behaviour in a situation. Goals can be to stop or start behaving in a certain way.

Behaviour is a function of the environment

Behaviour is a determined by the nature of the situation, therefore is a function of the environment. , so to change the environment changes our behaviour.  The relationship between self and environment is dynamic, self-shapes environment and vice versa. How we perceive and interact affects the environment, and how others act how the situation impinges on us affects us.  Personal adjustment, achieving goals, is a question of changing the interrelation between self and environment.

Behaviour is learned

Our behaviour, our interaction with the environment is learned, but is also modified by new experience and by our goals. The environment, created by our perceptions thus evokes behaviours that have been learned in the past and to teach new behaviours.

Achieving self-direction

Whilst you cannot completely control your behaviour as there is the past that affects your behaviour, your future, modified by social forces and the environment that all interact on it, you certainly can increase your control. The scientific disciplines that deal with this are known as behavioural analysis and behavioural modification.

Self-Direction and Will Power

Self-direction is about actualising your values, or should I say living in tune with your values as your values are ideals that can never be realised, but I guess they can be lived, you can say I value generosity but if it is never actualised by acting generously then it is never realised and is something of a fantasy. Self-direction is about achieving goals that accord with your values.

The relation with will power and self-direction is to place yourself in situations where self-direction becomes easier. To not sin, is to not put yourself in the situation that occasions sin. Will power is not therefore clenched teeth but rather guiding yourself to situations that make your destinies become easier.

The process of self-direction

Successful self-direction contains:

1.       Self-knowledge (desire)

2.       Planning

3.       Information gathering

4.       Modification of plans in light of the information available

Self-direction is a process, setting and modifying goals is a process. These processes don’t end, but rather should be a way of life.  Even if you achieve your goal, you need to keep it achieved unless you change your goal.

Summary

People in therapy want to change. Change their emotions, change their behaviours. So what causes the current problem emotion\behaviour? Psychoanalysts, proponents of the medical model, trait theorists would all argue that there are internal causes. Psychoanalysts would argue its drive conflict that causes it. Medical model proponents would argue it’s a chemical\genetic deficiency. Trait theorist would argue that it’s a personality.

What all of these theorists miss out is the effect of the environment, people, places and things. The relations between self and environment one is a dynamic one. The self perceives the environment and they do so due to their mood, past experiences and futural goals. The self also changes the environment by interacting with it. Likewise the environment changes the individual, by talking to it, raining on it, or leaving a bright new penny in front of it to be picked up.

Emotion and behaviour is context dependent, thus to change is to change the interaction between self and environment.  Once you achieve your goal you need to keep it, thus change is a process.

To achieve change then you need to be clear on

1.       Your desires to produce goals

2.       Planning, you need to plan how to achieve your goal

3.       Information, to find out how, to understand the situations where you can achieve your desires. Information about yourself, your capabilities and information about the environment where you can achieve your goals

4.       Plan modification. In light of changing information you need to adapt your goal to suit

Chapter 2 Self-directed behaviour

Steps in self-directed change

1.       Select a goal

2.       Specify the behaviours necessary to change to reach this goal, i.e. target behaviours. This makes the goal specific and achievable, if you can’t specify behaviours that you need to achieve this, then is the goal realisable? I want to not be depressed might be a goal, but the steps to achieve this may be nebulous, and therefore the goal nebulous too. So another way to achieve this would be what would you do if you weren’t depressed, then make these targets and this cuts out the middle man.

3.       Observer target behaviours. Find out the events that stimulate them, the obstacles and those things that reward them. Finding out the situational modifiers makes life easier as you can change the situation. Self-reinforcement is rewarding yourself for target behaviours.

4.       Work out a plan for change. What situations do you want to be in more of or less of, how can you get rewarded for your target behaviour.

5.       Readjust your plan as you get to learn more about yourself

Applying principles

The principles of human behaviour are used in self-adjustment work. Principles of human behaviour included punishment and reward modify behaviour. Situations modify behaviour. Self-observation modifies behaviour so counting target behaviour is the activity of self-observation. Establishing desires and putting them into a concrete form means you can do something about them. Big problems broken into small problems are easier to achieve. Success breeds success.

Adjusting and changing plans

Plans need to be adjusted, so is the overall goal what you want, are the methods towards it working, is the plan having an unpleasant consequence?

Does a self-change plan really work?

They can, people can successfully self-direct, of course though they can fail but the thing that comes out of the difference is that if you use techniques for long enough they will pay off. If you reward your behaviour this will make a difference.

Summary

Okay to get a goal you need to

1.       Specify target behaviour

2.       Plan

3.       Monitor

4.       Implement

5.       Adjust plan

6.       Rewards

To specify target behaviour puts reality on your plan if your target behaviour is unrealistic and unspecifiable then this is the incarnation of your goal, so this should be adjusted.  As you monitor your target behaviour you look at circumstantial modulators, you understand punishments and rewards. This does two things, one it makes you a self-observer and two it provides you with ideas as to how to achieve your plans.  As you observe yourself you slow down and in this process you take a more conscious engagement with your target behaviour which does actually modify that behaviour.

Chapter 3 Specifying the goal

You can’t work towards a goal until you know what you would be doing, thinking and feeling to know if you’ve achieved your goal. Putting a goal in behavioural terms means you can take action towards achieving your goal as you know how you want to act. It is concrete.

Ideas that interfere with specifying the goal

Abstract goals can’t provide concrete action to achieve goals which is what is required.  So to say I want to be more confident is to point back to a personality that is a label which has been justified by an overestimation of the similarities of behaviour and an underestimate of the dynamic interplay between self and environment.  You can only change specific things, so goals need to be defined in these terms.

You may also think that you need to change your motives. Understanding what motivates you is useful in terms of understanding your rewards and punishments, but stating a goal as I need to be more motivated only defines the problem not the solution.

Tactics for specifying behaviours in situations

Focus on your goals for practice not your goals of practice, so if you want to be a great football player, make your goal, to become a better football player in practice and focus on that.

Make a list of concrete examples

If you have an abstract problem like being depressed, then specify this in terms of concrete examples, I stay in my house all the time when I’d want to do things that interest me. What you need to do is to specify behaviour and situation in an example. You can make you concrete goal contain all the behaviours and situations it does include and those it doesn’t, as it gives scope for the goal.  In specifying a goal for change then take 3 or 4 everyday examples of the problem and see what is common for all of them.

Ask yourself what you would be dong if you achieved your goal

If your client struggles to articulate their behaviour to achieve their goal, then ask them how it would be if they achieved it. Doing it this way can articulate what they actually want to achieve. You may want to use creative visualisation and imagination to flesh this out, use the full range of senses.

Phrase the goal as behaviours in-situations

If you do this then your goal becomes more concrete, and you have a situation and your interaction with it that you can modify

Become an Observer

When you use vague abstract labels to describe yourself your behaviour then you need to become an observer.  The vague abstract labels are more of a speculation, observation will remedy this.  The observer can see problems in greater details and see patterns of behaviours, both of this makes the problem\goal more concrete and more achievable.  The shorter the time between the observation and its recording the more accurate it will be.

So if a client has a vague problem, set them a task of getting examples and making them more concrete. So what was the situation, how did you feel, what did you think, what did you do, and how did your body feel.

When the problem is non-performance of behaviour

See what you are doing in a target situation

Specify what you are doing in the situation when you should be doing target behaviour, what do I do when I should be working.

See what you should be doing in the target situation

You are more likely to succeed when you try to increase positive behaviour rather than decreasing negative behaviour. This is because taking action engages but stopping action always leaves a hole.

Specify the chain of actions that will produce your goal

Sometimes it is difficult to know what your positive behaviour should be, i.e. I’m depressed but don’t know what to do to change this. In this instance look at a chain of events that may well lead to a positive outcome. When the chain of behaviour is produced you can see where the chain breaks down. Then think about changing that behaviour and how it will affect your goal. If you can’t see a causal relationship then you may well have the wrong goal.

Get advice

If you can’t get all the links in the chain to get to your target behaviour then ask for help from friends and family. What you want in advice is what are the steps to get to the target behaviour, not reasons or judgements why you haven’t.

Use a model

Observe the behaviour of those who achieve their target behaviour, this can enable you to flesh out your chain of behaviour. Some people think imitating other people is distasteful. Still as children we imitated then appropriated. Observing others can also give you ideas which you can use as they are, synthesise with your ideas, do in your style.

Role playing

Pretending you are in a situation say with your therapist, or in your imagination, can give you ideas in terms of how you do act and the ways that you need to act differently.  This enables you to self-observe on events that happen too quickly or too rarely to learn from. 

When your goal is not a behaviour one

There may also be behaviours that are contributing to you not achieving your goals that you are not aware of. To find these out ask yourself what you are doing that interferes with you achieving your goals.

To achieve non-behavioural goals, like slimness, or shyness, then these are achieved behaviourally and contrariwise the problem is created and maintained behaviourally.

Self-analysis enables you to become a scientist of yourself. If you ask who am I, then the question is better framed with what would I be doing if I knew who I was.

Successive approximations to a goal

As you self-observe then you may get successive approximations to a goal. So if you see that your target behaviour is created by a situation, then find out what it is about that situation causes your target behaviour. So if getting frustrated with your child leads to depression, you may see that it is the feeling of being a bad dad that causes you to be depressed and realise that comparison with others is causing the problem. So your goal would be to stop comparing yourself with others or to put in positive terms to start valuing what you do more.

Changing plans as your self-understanding deepens

As you see one chain of behaviour that leads to target behaviour then you can set a goal. As you start to achieve that goal, you may see another chain that leads to the behaviour then you can target that one. Likewise it’s also good to start off with small achievable goals, then once they have been achieved then to start looking at building on that.

For more complex goals where do you begin?

Start observing and start with a small achievable goal, but one that inspires you.

Has the goal been correctly identified?

Check that on implementation of your plan that it has made an impact on target behaviour.

How to Increase your self-efficacy beliefs

1.       Focus on the process of change not the end goal, then you get more rapid reinforcement

2.       Discriminate between past performance and present project

a.       If you have failed before it doesn’t mean to say you will fail again

3.       Whilst focussing on the process of change keep records of your progress

4.       Realise that being emotional in a situation doesn’t mean to say you cannot perform adequately

a.       Being brave doesn’t mean you are afraid, it means you are and doing it anyway

5.       Make a list of specific situations in which you expect to find difficult

a.       Put the harder ones off until you have conquered the easier ones.

6.       Pick a target you have some confidence of achieving

Becoming optimistic

What we expect creates self-fulfilling prophecies that affect our behaviour. Unrealistic optimism creates its own truth, although within limits!! So realistic optimism. No matter how optimistic I am I won’t become an Olympic gymnast.

Optimism can be generated by:

1.       Writing down the reasons you will be successful.

2.       Write out a chain of events that can lead to success

Stages in your thoughts about changing

1.       Precontemplation, not thinking about changing

2.       Contemplation, thinking about changing but not specifically when

3.       Preparation, getting ready to change at a certain date

4.       Action, change occurs

5.       Maintenance, relapse prevention

Relate your target goals to life goals

It’s easier to change when you realise a target behaviour conflict s with a strongly held belief, or value.

Summary

To get a goal you need to specify it in terms of contextual behaviours. Doing it in this way enables you to be able to take specific action. It also enables you to observe and learn about your current situations and to learn what are the modulators of your target behaviour.

To specify a vague problem in contextual behavioural terms if you struggle

1.       List examples of target behaviour and abstracts the commonality

2.       Ask yourself what things would be like if you achieved your goals

3.       Always specify target behaviour in situation

4.       Move from using labels to observation, depressed, shy are labels find out what the actual behaviour\situation circumstances are to get more data

If the problem is non-performance, e.g. I want to do more exercise

1.       Find out what you are doing in the situation when you should be doing it

2.       Try to specify the goal in positive terms, as you can only really act towards taking action, rather than not taking it, as it always leaves an absence that needs to be filled

3.       Find out the chain of action that would lead to the behaviour you want and you may well find a gap. If you can’t do this, then use modelling of other people, or get advice or use your imagination of the situation. Doing this can provide ideas as to how to produce your chain of action, or see ways in which you actively prevent  the chain being completed

If the problem is non-behavioural e.g. I want to be slim then

1.       Specify in terms of the behaviours that add to and reduce the ability to achieve target behaviour

2.       Again use chain of action analysis to provide steps to achieve

If the problem is complex

1.       Again chain of action analysis to break down into small achievable units

2.       Use observation to understand the situation, then observe again to find out what really is the problem. Successive observation iteration will enable you to find the root issues in a problem that may not be that complex.

Chapter 4 Self-knowledge: Observation and recording

Self-knowledge is the key to self-direction. Your behaviours, your actions, thoughts and feelings are embedded in situations all of these aspects must be carefully observed. Observation is a much underrated technique. Our casual observation can be affected by emotion and can sometimes generate false memories. People think that they know themselves but then on a closer observation can make many discoveries.  

Discovering the effects of situations

Antecedents and consequences

A situation has a before and an after. So in terms of your target behaviour, what was the situation before your target behaviour and after.  So when you do SETB this is quite often a mix of before and afterwards. I was left on the seat by myself, I was angry at my boyfriend. The latter emotion possibly happened a bit later, there may well have been the emotion of feeing lost and abandoned at the time of sitting at the seat. So when doing SETB look at the temporal element. So to use ABC analysis with a target behaviour, is to ask what happened before the behaviour and what happened afterwards.

Antecedents, is what, where, when with whom. It can also be thoughts and feelings and physical events. It main aspect is what was the stimuli for the behaviour.

Behaviours: Actions, thoughts and feelings

Consequences: was it pleasant or unpleasant, so what did it feel like

Using the ABC analysis finds out the causes of behaviour and their consequences and allows you to alter the causal elements and find other ways of getting consequences if there is positive reinforcement.

Structured diaries for antecedents and consequences

Using a diary can start to show themes and patterns, you do this by measuring the same thing at different times and contexts. What they will do is show up situational themes, the nature of the situation might be what happens, how you think or how you feel.

ABC

Write down the antecedents, behaviours and consequences

Mechanics of diary writing

Write up the event as soon as the target behaviour has happened.

Recording thoughts and feelings

Thoughts can be the target for change, i.e. putting yourself down, or they can be the antecedent, i.e. putting myself down, can make me try to seem superior. Thoughts can be verbal as well as visual.

What the diary tells you

A diary at first glance say for giving up smoking may contain a catalogue of seemingly unrelated events to the problem in hand. It may take some time and some patience to see any patterns of behaviour that modulate the target behaviour, it may be that you also through looking more closely at situations that there was a thought or image or emotion that you had just before the target behaviour happened. So for instance you may find that you smoke, when you have a strong emotion that you can’t deal with and there’s the thought that a magic stick will take it away.

Frequency recording

Simple counting

When you count you can see if your strategies to enable target behaviour is working, you can count frequency, duration, intensity, successes or failures. Also with counting you give yourself distance from your target behaviour to better understand it. Simple counting can either be numeric, did something happen, or in terms of duration, how long did it happen for. You can also combine counting with categorisation of situation, or antecedent. So if you smoke, then after eating, for a break etc. can be used to see what antecedent is most common for your smoking.  You need to count as soon as the behaviour happens or you will forget it.  Sometimes people don’t, or stop counting for the fearful news that it will provide.  Recording devices should be present when the behaviour occurs

Counting is the basis of self-observation.

Rules for counting

1.       Do it when the behaviour occurs

2.       Be accurate

3.       Keep the recording system as simple as possible

4.       Keep written records

Rating scales

You can use a rating scale of different levels of intensity to record emotional issues where intensity rather than frequency is of issue. So make sure your measurement type fits the what is being measured. Rating scales can put things in perspective, if its happiness is of issue, put death on one side and lottery win on the other and this will show that your current issues are not as great as you think.

Combining techniques

You can use a daily log where you have a rating scale on the left, time on the right, and shifts in rating can be attached to an event.

The reactive effects of self-observation

You perform differently when being watched and this also includes you as observer. This is known as reactivity. Undesirable behaviours tend to diminish when you are observing and recording them. The levels of reactivity depend on how much you care about changing what you are recording. Evidence suggests 15% of plans that people care about are changed by simply observing. If you record before you engage in target behaviour this can make a difference, e.g. marking down calories before eating will reduce how much you eat.  You can also record within the chain of actions that lead to the target behaviour. Doing this will break the chain and prevent the target behaviour.

Public record keeping can increase reactivity but you might also want to be mindful of embarrassment or failure if things don’t go according to plan. So social reward if you succeed or social punishment if you don’t. It’s easier to keep records if you weave it into your patterns of behaviour.

Dealing with problems in getting records

Some behaviour happens absentmindedly, some you do so often you can’t recognise it anymore. In these instances then you may want to practice the behaviour whilst consciously attending to it. This is known as negative practice.  This practices paying attention to it.

Building record keeping into your pattern of habitual behaviours

As record keeping may be a punishment as it shows you the bad things that you are doing. So try rewarding yourself for keeping records. If you are failing at record keeping because it is behaviour in itself then try applying behavioural principles to find out when it works and when it doesn’t and make this the first target behaviour.

Self-recorded data and planning for change

If you get a baseline prior to starting your plan, you can monitor the efficacy of your strategies.

Difficulty in recording data

1.       Target behaviour not specific in terms of behaviour in situation

2.       Target behaviour is unconscious

a.       In this case deliberately practice the target behaviour and monitor it, this will aid getting used to monitoring

b.      Ask friends to point out when you do it

3.       Target behaviour is unpleasant and not something you want to record

4.       Record keeping is not simple enough

Aids to recording data

1.       Specifically define target behaviour

2.       Recording device must always be present

3.       Simple recording system, e.g. peas in pocket

4.       Not punishing  recording system

5.       Rewards given for recording

Summary

Self-observation is critical to change. It enables you to understand the scope of the problem, what you do and how often. It also provides information about the situations in which you do it and the consequences of doing it.

Firstly with self-observation you need to do an ABC analysis. This provides information about the situation and its effects.  You may also want to provide a before behaviour ABC and an after. This provides in greater relief the stimuli that led to the target behaviour, that in some way set up the situation such that you behaved in a certain way. If you then extend the analysis to provide an ABC analysis of a few examples of the target behaviour then you can see these emerging and you might find a new aspect of the situations that is very influential in providing stimuli for the target behaviour.

When you have done an ABC analysis you know some more about yourself and the target behaviour. After that then you need do count the instances of the behaviour either numerically, or in terms of intensity or duration. Counting in this way provides you with more self-observation and what this does it tap into the reactive effect.  When people are watched they perform differently, when you watch yourself then you likewise act differently. If you can count prior to starting your plan then you provide a baseline which then enables you to gauge success of your plan.

Your counting also may provide situational information, such that I always struggle at 4pm and during the week, which again may aid information to be able to formulate interventions.

People can have difficulty doing this as either their behaviour is unconscious or unpleasant. If it is the former then you need to actively do the behaviour whilst monitoring, and practise monitoring. If it is unpleasant then you need to make this the plan and apply behavioural principles to help you do it. Using reward for counting can really help.

Chapter 5.1 The principles of self-regulation theory and practice

This is chapter 4 in the 2002 edition

Regulation theory

There are many machines that self-regulate, e.g. thermometers, where there is a desired goal, some sensing and some action that follows if there is a discrepancy between the two.

Self-regulation is we have standards of behaviour, we perceive how we do behave and a gap between the two produces a call to action, well hopefully or we can become emotionally activated and not act!! To act requires energy and in humans that can be provided by attention Having emotion can be a motivator to change, so disgusted by your behaviour!

Regulation theory explains an inability to act, out of the following:

1.       Having no standards to achieve

2.       Not attending to current performance

3.       Actions are not available to us to change

Social constructivism

All behaviours develop in the following stages:

1.       Control by others

2.       Control by self

3.       Automatization

I get shown how to drive, do it mechanically, then do it automatically.

When behaviour is automatic, then it has come under the control of antecedents in the environment. If however the automatic behaviour doesn’t suit you, then you can bring it back under control. This is done by directing your attention to your own behaviour and breaking the undesired automatic cycle.

Development of language regulation

Small children are told what to do, they then might repeat out loud what to do, and in time this becomes subvocal and in time this becomes automatic.  To get to automatic behaviour some of these verbal statements get distilled into rules, some becomes pre-conscious.

Principles

1.       From early life to adulthood, regulation by others and the self (particularly through verbal instructions) act as a powerful guide to behaviour

2.       Operant behaviour is a function of its consequences

3.       A positive reinforcer is a conseuqnce that maintains and strengthens behaviour by its added presence

4.       A negative reinforcers is a consequence that strengthens its behaviour by being subtracted from the situation

5.       Behaviour that is punished will occur less often

6.       An act that was reinforced but no longer is will begin to weaken

7.       Intermittent reinforcement increases resistance to extinction

8.       Most operant behaviour is eventually guided by antecedent stimuli, the most important of which are often self-directed statements

a.       An antecedent becomes a cue to behaviour when that behaviour is reinforced in the presence of that antecedent

9.       An antecedent can be a cue or signal that an unpleasant event may be imminent, This is likely to produce avoidance behaviour.

10.   Through conditioning, antecedents come to elicit automatic reactions that are often emotional

11.   Many behaviours are learned by observing someone else perform the actions, which are then imitated.

When an antecedent automatically evokes a behaviour then it is said to have stimulus control.  It gets this way by being repeatedly associated with a reinforced behaviour.  You can break stimulus control by changing the antecedents, you can try using a self-statement.

Chapter 5.2 Behaviour-environment relationships

Situations can be understood in terms of ABC analysis. This shows what stimuli are in the environment for you and what positive reinforcers are.

Effects of consequences

Behaviour is strengthened if there are positive consequences.

Operant behaviours

Behaviours that are strengthened by their consequences are called operant behaviours. An operant behaviour is something that has a consequence on your environment, i.e. changes the environment.  I think the thing though is focus, an operant behaviour is a function of its consequence, you do it because of its consequence, some behaviours are done because of their intrinsic pleasure, operant behaviours are a function of the consequence, if you didn’t get the consequence you wouldn’t do the behaviour. Operant behaviours are strengthened or weakened by what follows them.

Some consequences strengthen behaviours

The best index to gauge the likelihood of an action is its frequency, the more often something is done, the more likely it is that it will be done.

Reinforcers

If a consequence strengthens its behaviour then it is called a reinforcer. Positive reinforces encourage behaviour through their presence, negative reinforcers encourage behaviour through their absence. So if you’ve had a good outcome, and you expect it again, then you will do the behaviour more often, which is positive reinforcement. If you’ve had a good outcome, through something not being there, e.g. anxiety, then you will do it again when you want to get rid of anxiety.

Escape and avoidance

Negative reinforcement shows how we avoid unpleasant consequences. Escape learning is negative reinforcement that terminates the unpleasant consequences, in avoidance learning negative reinforcement avoids the unpleasant consequences. This can be useful as some people do things for which there are apparently no consequences, no reasons, but it could well be negative reinforcement that motivates it as they avoid an unpleasant situation. Avoidant behaviours are often performed in an unemotional, blasé way.

Reinforcing consequences in your life

To understand negative and positive reinforcement is important as it gets you to understand your action and the things that it produces. It may be hard to change behaviour as it gets you some kind of reinforcement, so understanding that reinforcement is important so that you can seek to get that elsewhere. Alternatively you can put in place your own reinforcement of the behaviour that you want, or tweak the reinforcement of behaviour you don’t want, looking to reduce the rewards.

Punishment

Behaviour that is punished, has negative outcomes will occur less often. Punishment can be either a painful outcome, or a reduction of pleasure. Negative reinforcement makes the behaviour more likely, punishment makes the behaviour less likely.

Extinction

An act that has previously been reinforced and now no longer is, will be less likely to occur. The weakening of motivation to behave by the removal of reinforcement is called extinction. If the reinforcement is intermittent, then this reduces the level of extinction as there is still a hope that the reinforcement will come back. So if after 50 acts you get reinforcement, then you may well  wait another 50 to see if you are going to be reinforced, thus the act  becomes more persistent.

Effects of antecedents

There are antecedents in a situation that can indicate that a positive or negative outcome is likely, and these can guide behaviour.  The distinction between operant behaviour and the effect of antecedents is quite tight. In operant behaviour, what the outcomes of an action are reinforce that action being done. In the effects of antecedents, there are clues in your environment as to what the consequence is and you behave on the basis of that. If eating red things has led to an upset stomach you associate red things with an upset stomach and avoid eating red things, likewise if you eat blue things and its pleasant then you associate blue things with pleasure and eat more blue things. You can look at both of these events from either aspect either from the effect of antecedents or in terms of their consequences.

Avoidance learning is highly resistance to extinction as a person doesn’t learn that the unpleasant outcome is no longer there.

Stimuli that evoke a certain response are known as discriminative stimuli, i.e. I stop at a red light, think eating fudge will be nice. This cue lets us know when there will be some kind of reinforcement.

Stimulus Control

When a stimulus\cue consistently been associated with a reinforced behaviour then it gains stimulus control and becomes semi-automatic behaviour. A stimulus becomes a cue if the behaviour is reinforced, and if it is continually reinforced then the cue has stimulus control.

Respondent behaviour

Not all learning is based on the reinforcement of operant behaviour, some is automatically controlled by antecedent stimuli, e.g. knee reflex.  So a loud bang will make you behave in a startled way, there are no consequences that you are trying for, it is purely on stimulus that you respond. It is an automatic response, so up the scale from stimulus control.  These behaviours are controlled by the autonomic nervous system and are known as respondent behaviours. The antecedent stimuli is sufficient to cause the behaviour.  People can get these automatic, reflex like responses, in phobias.

Respondent conditioning

Respondent behaviour can be created by involving pairing with one stimuli that causes the behaviour with one that does not. So with anxiety, when there is the original stimulus, the UCS, that produces the UR, then this gets generalised to the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response.

Emotional Conditioning

You can transfer emotional behaviour, so that there is respondent behaviour to one stimulus, say a spider crawling over you, to another, a picture of a spider, or the fear that the spider is in the room. This is done via association.

Modelling

Much of human behaviour is learnt by imitation. This is learning through observation

Summary

Behaviour is learnt in 3 ways

Through

1.       Consequences

2.       Conditioning, where you associate a cue with an outcome

3.       Modelling peoples behaviours

Consequences: can either be positive or negative reinforcement. Positive means something good happens, and negative means something bad is taken away. Punishment is also a consequence and can be either an unpleasant event or a reduction in pleasurable events.  Behaviour is strengthened by reinforcement. If that reinforcement isn’t there then the behaviour is extinguished, an intermittent reinforcement being harder to extinguish.

Negative reinforcement can promote avoidance learning, where you avoid an unpleasant outcome by not doing something. This is hard to change as you never learn that the consequences have changed.

Conditioning:antecedents in our environment are stimulus or cues to reinforced behaviour. If there is a consistent relation between stimulus and reinforcement then the behaviour becomes semi-automatic and is said to be under stimulus control.  Some behaviour becomes reflexive, where it is automatic, you can see this when you shut your eyes when you sneeze. Conditioned learning is where you associated an unconditioned response with a neutral stimuli, such that the neutral stimuli produces a conditioned response, and thus is now a conditioned stimuli. So if a person when shot at ducks this is the unconditioned stimulus and response, they may then associate the bang of a cars exhaust with his and this neutral stimuli then makes them duck.

In therapy then you want to understand the positive and negative reinforcement from an act, what is it that makes you want to do this act. You also want to understand how this act has been motivated, is it by the consequences, the operant behaviour, or is it by conditioned associated to some other event that produces this behaviour.

For operant behaviour then what you would do is look to extinguish the reinforcement directly and also by providing other ways that you can achieve the reinforcement. For conditioned behaviour then you seek to break the links between the unconditioned and the conditioned.

Chapter 5.3 Antecedents

This is chapter 5 from the 2006 book

To identify antecedents:

1.       Look at the antecedent chain of events that leads to the problem, the antecedents are as much within the chain as just prior to the event

2.       Antecedents involve self-statements

a.       Self-instructions

b.      Beliefs: these may have to be logically deduced from the commonality through emotional reactions

                                                               i.      3 types of irrational beliefs

1.       I must..or else

2.       Others must..or else

3.       Conditions must..or else

Modifying old antecedents

1.       Avoid the old antecedents

a.       Absolutely, contextually

2.       Narrowing antecedent control

a.       Only allow the behaviour that you want to stop in a specific place\time. Works with insomnia only use the bed to sleep if awake after 10 minutes leave the bed.

3.       Reperceive antecedents

a.       So look at cigarettes as being sold by evil drug dealers trying to get your money to spend on lap dancers and guns

4.       Changing chains

a.       Change the chain of antecedents that leads up to the problem behaviour, as you get near the end of the chain, the behaviour or reaction becomes more under stimulus control, but higher  up the chain change is easier

                                                               i.      Build in pauses as you move from one link to the other

5.       Arranging new antecedents

a.       So what would the virtuous chain look like, can we take part of that and insert it into the problem chain

6.       Eliminating negative self-statements

a.       Often problem behaviour is via instruction, you’re going to fail here, so look to replace these negative self-statements with more positive ones

7.       Initiating positive self-statements

a.       Look to find realistic positive statements to help you act the way you want

8.       Thought substitution

a.       When you have a  negative thought challenge it and seek to find a more balanced thought

9.       Building new stimulus control

a.       So associate a very specific place, situation with a desired behaviour.

Chapter 6 Consequences

Arranging consequences

One basic formula for self-change is to give reward for desired behaviour.

Contingency

Reward is a positive reinforce if it is contingent on achieving desired behaviour. To change behaviour firstly understand what your reinforcers are an then make them contingent on desired behaviour

Direct observation of reinforcing consequences

Behaviourism maintains that there is some type of reinforcement maintaining undesirable behaviour. One way once you understand the reinforcement of your current maladjusted behaviour is to use that reinforcement on some desirable behaviour instead.

Consummatory responses

Detaching reinforcement from behaviour is especially difficult in the case of consummatory behaviours where the reinforcer is consumed. So the pleasure of drinking is the effect that the drink has when you drink, but it also functions as a pain reliever, and an uninhibitor, so these are the areas of reinforcement that can be changed.

Intermittent reinforcement and avoidance behaviours

If you have persistent maladaptive behaviour then it is possible that it is only intermittently reinforced therefore hard to extinguish.

Avoidance behaviour makes it difficult to find out reinforcers as the behaviour might have been done for so long, it becomes respondent behaviour and you forget why you do this behaviour in the first place.

Cataloguing and selecting reinforcers

If you can’t discover the reinforcers for the maladaptive behaviour you can still use reinforcers for the desired behaviour.

Positive reinforcers

List all of the things that you can use as treats, rewards etc. If no treats seem possible due to resources then  you can use the Premack principle.

The Premack Principle

This states that if you do something frequently and it is relatively easy to do, if you make it contingent on doing something that you don’t want to do, the latter item becomes easier to do. Any behaviour that you do less frequently will be performed more if you make it contingent on something your do more frequently. If you can link the desired and undesired activity this works quite well, so you can replace the undesired activity. The best choice for a an activity to pair with is something that you want to do, that you could stop doing which would inconvenience you, but not cause major problems, so don’t choose breathing.

Imagined reinforcers

You can imagine pleasant scenes, have pleasant thoughts as reinforces, although they aren’t as powerful as actual ones they do get around the resource problem or not having any ideas about other reinforcers.  The more vivid the imagination the more effective the reinforcement, so to get anything like this working then you would need to get the paradigm imagined scene done in session using NLP techniques. Don’t use imagined reinforcers instead of real ones.

How to use reinforcement

There are different levels of reinforcement, choose the strongest one that you can, the greatest reward.

Rapid reinforcement

The best reinforcement comes immediately after the behaviour as it strengthens the association. Often the undesired behaviour has immediate reinforcement, the desired behaviour has reinforcement in the future, thus what you need to do is to give yourself immediate reinforcement for the desired behaviour. You can increase the rapidity of reinforcement by shaping that is breaking the task\behaviour into smaller units and work with those. You can then use tokens as reinforcement where tokens represent smaller parts of larger gains.

Reinforcement for thoughts and feelings

You can use reinforcement on feelings, although I would question the efficacy here

Avoiding problems in reinforcement

Don’t overuse reinforcers or you will get tired of them and they will lose their potency and appeal.. Don’t use reinforcers that punish others as this can cause tension and lead to punishment. Use separate reinforcers for separate plans, or if you succeed with one plan, it will weaken your desire for the other plan.

Sharing reinforcers

When there is someone else affected by your contingent reinforcer say a partner, who you can go to the film with if you’re good, then you need to enlist their help. If someone is concerned about your behaviour then this can be useful leverage in getting them to do it

Using others to dispense the reinforcement

If self-discipline is weak then you can give something to another to give back to you when you behave in the desired way. This role is called the mediator role.

Extinction

Extinction is the weakening of behaviour by removing reinforcement from it. In self-direction extinction is harder to use, as as soon as you remove a reinforcer something else steps into its place. So if you skip class and go play pool, then stop playing pool, you may go home and watch TV instead. However you can use imagined extinction. Imagined extinction works very well with consummatory behaviours.  So imagine doing your behaviour but not getting the reinforcement, in fact maybe even imagine negative outcomes. The evidence for imagined extinction is slight, so don’t rely on it, but it can be used in combination with other approaches.

Self-punishment

Why punishment alone is insufficient

The behaviour itself may already be punishing and all you are doing is adding to the punishment.  So you already have the position that punishment. Punishment also doesn’t teach new behaviour, at best it least the desire for behaviour in place and creates a vacuum. One better approach than punishment is to reinforce an incompatible behaviour, if one exists. You can never say that you have changed behaviour if you need to keep the behaviour going by punishment, it must be supported by positive means, as otherwise there is no human agency in it. Guess the assumption being that humans are motivated by achieving positive outcomes.

Rules for punishment

1.       Use only removal of benefits

2.       Use punishment only as a method to positive reinforcement

3.       Use precommitment punishment as a deterrent and only temporarily

The loss of positive reinforcement as a punishment

Losing benefits is a better punishment than adding an unpleasant stimulus, although I’m not sure why. I guess that people get angry and resentful when punished and this isn’t good for learning.

Precommitment punishment

This means selecting yourself the punishment that will happen if you do the undesired behaviour. So make a cheque out to your most hated organisation and send it to them if you smoke. In precommitment strategies make the punishment so heavy that it acts as a deterrent.. These are high risk strategies and should only be used temporarily.

The only way reinforcement works is when you are trying to achieve a goal that you value. If you don’t you are forcing yourself to a goal you don’t want, which will reduce the concomitant amount of pleasure that is produced.

One of the powerful effects of reinforcement is that it highlights the activities, makes it more vivid, highlights your success.

Summary

A large part of our motivation for behaviour is the consequences of it. Working out what the positive and negative reinforcements for these are can help understand your behaviour and pave the way to do something about it. Positive reinforcement is getting the good stuff, negative reinforcement is not getting the bad stuff.  So if you have B1 that you are trying to change into B2, then you work out what the positive reinforcers are for B1, then try to either reduce them, or to put them onto B2.  Behaviour that is motivated by consequences is known as operant behaviour. If you can reduce the positive reinforcement break the link, then this is known as extinction.  Extinction is harder to weaken when the reinforcement is intermittent. Likewise when negative reinforcement produces avoidance where you don’t get the thing you are averse to, this is quite hard to shift as you no longer realise that the bad stuff won’t happen when you behave.

If something is hard to shift, or you can’t see what the reinforcers are, then you can use imagined extinction where you imagine the scene in vivid detail without the reinforcement or even something quite nasty happening.

So the best way to get B2 to happen is to positively reinforce it. If you can’t find anything then you can use the Premack principle and choose a behaviour b3 which is relatively neutral in terms of pleasure but more frequent than b2 and make doing b3 contingent on b3.

Using reinforcement to its full effect.

1.       Ensure reinforcement as soon after behaviour as possible

2.       You can use shaping to ensure rapid reinforcement

3.       Only use reinforcers that are potent, so you can wear them out

Chapter 7 Developing new behaviours

The techniques of reinforcement work mentioned in the consequences section on the actual behaviour so how do you get the behaviour started in the first place. So for new skills then you need some techniques. Using shaping techniques is useful as you get to see all the component parts of the desired goal, you get to reinforce each step to make progress and you get to get more awareness of how to do it, by seeing its components as well as seeing that it is an achievable task.

The four techniques to develop new behaviour are

1.       Shaping

2.       Modelling

3.       Incompatible behaviours

4.       Rehearsal

Shaping: The reinforcement of successive approximations

To learn a new skill then if you break it down into small steps and reinforce each step then this can make learning the new skill easier. Shaping starts from your current level of skill increase the skill piece by piece with reinforcement to get to the next level

How shaping works in self-directed behaviour

Start at level 1, when  you can consistently perform at this level move to level 2, on each level you get reinforced.

3 rules for shaping

1.       You can never begin too low

2.       Step ups can never be too small

3.       Be flexible, adjust the steps, repeat the steps if problem, go back to a previous step, take longer on each step than you expected

Using Models to set shaping steps

If you have no idea of the steps you need, then look to use a role model to guide you, ask them, or observe them to create the steps.

Problems in shaping

Plateaus

You may well make good progress in the early steps then hit a plateau where you make no progress. What you can do here is to break the step down into smaller steps. Alternatively given that the plateau experience is common you can simply ride out the plateau, be patient.  Again if it is hard look to how other people handle this step. Maybe you have reached your skill level and the plan should be terminated.

Cheating

It is easy to cheat and give yourself reinforcement when you didn’t achieve a step. In this instance you may want to use someone else to give reinforcement so they can check you are achieving your steps.

Losing Will Power

Often it isn’t a will power problem but a shaping problem with the steps being too big.

Incompatible behaviour

To rid yourself of an old habit you need to replace it somehow, do something else. Thus the most efficient way to replace an old behaviour is to reinforce a new incompatible behaviour.  If you try to extinguish behaviour you are left with a vacuum, if you try to punish behaviour you are left with resentment and without any new skills. Also with incompatible behaviours then you can use reinforcement to increase them, true you could use reinforcement with the absence of behaviour, but humans work better with a positive thing, rather than a negative, negation being an abstraction.

The incompatible behaviour may not be a behaviour you want to keep, for instance making a fist instead of cracking your fingers, but finding any incompatible behaviour will help you remove the old behaviour.  You must reinforce the incompatible behaviour as it is usually not as desired as the maladaptive behaviour.

Incompatible behaviour method

1.       Find an incompatible behaviour that you want to replace your old behaviour

2.       If you can’t find that then find an incompatible behaviour that would prevent the old behaviour

3.       Count the incompatible behaviour

4.       Reinforce the new behaviour

Relieving depression with incompatible thoughts

Whilst hard you can use incompatible thoughts to combat emotions. Find a good feeling thought and whenever you find yourself thinking bad thoughts then use this to combat the mood

Behaviours incompatible with anxiety and tension

The most incompatible behaviour with anxiety is relaxation, however there are also distractors. So a socially anxious person may be asked to go to a social situation note the different occupation of all the people there. Sexual arousal combats anxiety as does intellectual curiosity. Physical exercise can also work as can meditation.

Technique

1.       Identify the situation in which you are anxious

2.       Choose a behaviour that is incompatible with anxiety

3.       Practice that behaviour in that situation

Relaxation

This can be achieved by yoga and meditation. Deep muscle relaxation is also almost always accompanied by mental calm. To use relaxation techniques then at the first sign of tension use it to relax and reduce tension. Relaxation has various levels, there is mild to deep. As you practice become aware of the range of these responses, so you can relax to an appropriate level. Learn to relax in as many situations as possible, so that when real life situations come then you can relax in them.  Relaxation should be used before you encounter what you think might be a problematic situation.

Developing new behaviours through rehearsal

The best way to master a skill is to practice in or before the situation takes place. If this isn’t possible, then use imagined rehearsal. So first of all relax, then imagine a situation in minute detail, use all your senses, see how your anxiety levels are. If they are a high then imagine yourself being relaxed in that situation. Then relax again and imagine the scene, repeat this process until you are not anxious when you imagine that scene.

You can also imagine the problem behaviour, its adaption and imagine its reinforcement. Through rehearsing in this way then you will increase the likelihood of behaving in this way in vivo. You can also imagine being relaxed in a situation where you would be anxious.

You can also construct a feared hierarchy and move through it imaginally, this would also help with a shaping approach. So one way that you could work with feared hierarchy is firstly to write them down to see the steps you have to achieve your end point. Then you can imagine being in them in a relaxed fashion, when you have imagined a step and being relaxed in it, then you are in a position to do it for real. In the imagination then you imagine being relaxed and imagine a positive reinforcement for it. So that’s it do the feared hierarchy, list positive reinforcement for each level, practice relaxation, when you have relaxation skills then do an imaginal rehearsal of each level and achieve it without anxiety and imagine getting your positive reinforcement. Then do it for real, and repeat until you feel confident.

Developing new behaviours through modelling

Modelling is probably the most prolific method of learning. In this instance you can take a role model and imagine how they would deal with a certain situation, then imagine yourself as that person doing that act. In terms of role models either choose someone you know, or a screen icon, or an imagined person.

Summary

To create new behaviours there are certain techniques to use

1.       Shaping

2.       Incompatible behaviours

3.       Imagination

4.       Rehearsal

5.       Modelling

Shaping takes the new task such as for me fishing and breaks it down into its component parts. Each part needs to be small enough to be achievable. The exercise of shaping then enables you to get a better understanding of the task which gives you how much resource is required to do the task, what’s the impact of the task, what’s the temporal implications of learning the task etc. What it also does is enable you to attach reinforcement to each part such that you can reward yourself for getting closer to achieving the task, and thus make the task more achievable.  As you perform the sub tasks of the task, then perform the step, get reinforcement, repeat the step until you are happy with it then move onto the next one.

Problems that you can face in shaping are

1.       Defining the shape

a.       If you struggle to shape then look to a model to see how they do it, by observation, or take advice from someone as to how they do it.

2.       Plateaus

a.       See if  the next step can be shaped

b.      If it isn’t this is a natural part and be patient

c.       After you have been patient maybe you have come to the end of your skill\interest in this task and therefore you should abandon it

3.       Cheating

a.       People can reinforce when they haven’t achieved their step, this being the case get a third party to give reinforcements

4.       Losing will power

a.       Often with will power it’s actually a problem with shaping, so the steps are too big

One difficulty with shaping is that you need to have effective reinforcers, so stage one in shaping is to define a list of contingent pleasurable reinforcers, also as you need to be able to repeat each step until you are happy with it then you need to be able to keep your reinforcers fresh. One way would be to use imagined reinforcers.

Incompatible behaviour

Whenever you want to produce a new behaviour it is going to be replacing an existing one. So I want to have better social skills, this is going to replace my poor social skills. As removing something is harder than doing something new, then you can use an incompatible behaviour to do this.  

There are two types of incompatible behaviour

1.       The desired replacement of the original behaviour

2.       A preferred replacement of the original behaviour

3.       Something that is incompatible with the original behaviour

As soon as you have the incompatible behaviour then reinforce it. Sometimes the incompatible behaviour can be done before the original behaviour, e.g. relaxing before the exam, or sometimes during, social anxious persons, makes a note of what everyone is wearing in a room.

Rehearsal

The best way to introduce new behaviour is to rehearse it in situation. If this isn’t available then you can do it using imagination

Using Imagination you can

1.       Imagine applying incompatible behaviour in situation

2.       Imagined reinforcement

3.       Imagine a role model achieving what you want to

4.       Imagine applying new skill

5.       Move up a shaped\feared hierarchy

Chapter 8 Antecedents

Identifying Antecedents

Within any situation where there is unwanted behaviour then it happens for a reason, in another situation then you would act differently, so what was it about that situation that got you acting the way that you did. There are likely to be multiple antecedents to unwanted behaviour.

Controlling and rearranging antecedents

When you have discovered the antecedents that have stimulus control then you can avoid them to avoid the unwanted behaviour. However this doesn’t teach you how to deal with it, and if you are faced with the antecedent again, likewise it is difficult to reinforce avoidant behaviour. When you learn your new behaviour then rehearse, shape and reinforce.

Consummatory problems

 The best way to deal with consummatory problems is to start with avoidance, then to build new incompatible behaviours that allow you to deal with the antecedents again. So you should reinforce avoiding in stage one, then reinforce being able to be exposed to the antecedents. For consumptory issues then imagined extinction can also be useful, imagine the doughnut tasting

When there are multiple antecedents then you can look to gain control over one by one. So you are shaping your antecedents. Then you can apply, avoidance, stage one, then imagined avoidance, then ability to be with the antecedent without the unwanted behaviour.

Interpersonal problems

When the antecedent is the behaviour of another person then you can use positive reinforcement for another kind of behaviour. If you punish bad behaviour this leads to another punishment or retaliation and a vicious cycle. If you reward good behaviour then this leads to a virtuous cycle. Sometimes you need to ask what are the antecedents I am providing for another and then reinforce another behaviour

Narrowing antecedents

Here if you identify the antecedents, then you narrow them down until the behaviour is unlikely to occur at all. Here you can either remove as many antecedents as possible, isolate the act, so that you also get no reinforcement. So a smoking chair, where all you do is smoke.

Breaking up chains

The current antecedents are the result of a long chain of antecedent and consequence, the consequence then being the antecedent to another consequence. Here the best form of action is to break the chain early. If there is a stimulus control between one antecedent and a consequence then associate the antecedent with other consequences, so if standing in the garden is always associated with smoking then go and stand in the garden for another reason. Likewise you can pause between items in the chain or select a different behaviour, so if standardly you pour the drink get the ice and then drink, the pour the drink and go and empty the washing machine.

Changing the chain of events

When you have the chain of events then look for strategies to break the chain, you can use substitute behaviour or pauses or making a record. The earlier in the chain you can break it the more effective it is.

Arranging new antecedents

The aim here is to build in some stimulus control for the desired behaviour.  Stimulus control happens when there is consistent reinforcement to a stimulus and that reinforcement only happens with that stimulus. So the trick is  here to set up some antecedents that only have the desired consequences and nothing else. For instance with insomnia make sure the only thing you do in bed is sleep or have sex. Firstly don’t do anything else in it, don’t read, watch TV, and if you can’t sleep get up until you feel tired. If you need to multi use an object, then arrange it in a specific way that you associate with a specific task.

You can also analyse for your desired behaviour what the antecedents of this are when you do it, so again you can arrange antecedents to achieve this. You can also arrange to make some antecedents only related to a certain thing, so if concentrating whilst studying is important then make a special place to do this, and only be in that place when you are concentrating.

Creating stimulus generalisation

If you create a special place where you only do your desired behaviour and associate your behaviour with that place that that’s stage one, stage two is generalising this behaviour so you can do it in other places. To do this then find antecedents that are similar to the paradigm.

Precommitment and programming your social environment

Precommitment is to arrange in advance helpful antecedents. You can also use cues and reminders for your desire behaviour

Self-instructions

You can use this as antecedent and give yourself self-instruction, so psyche yourself up for the event, or activity. You can also use music to get yourself in the desired mood, pumped up, or relaxed.

Technique

1.       Make self-instruction explicit enough to guide behaviour

2.       Make self-instruction seem reasonable to you

3.       Use them to guide your behaviour in actual situations

As much as you can use positive self-instruction, listen out for any negative self-instruction that supports undesired behaviour and challenge that when you hear it

Summary

Antecedents have an impact on behaviour, some antecedents have stimulus control whereby they are positively reinforced and become a semi-automatic way of behaving. They do this by continually being associated with reinforcement.  Even if there isn’t stimulus control then behaviour is done in certain situations and there are prompts, cues to certain behaviour. Thus for smoking you smoke when you are angry say, or when you need a break. Through understanding what the antecedents to your behaviour are then you can learn to do something about it.

So the task here is to identify all the antecedents to your undesired action.  The first option to deal with these is to avoid these situation and reinforce this behaviour, then one by one use reinforcement to deal with the antecedents. You can deal with the antecedents by imagined rehearsal.

If the antecedents are strong and have stimulus control then there are other options. The antecedents with stimulus control have a long chain of consequences that themselves become other antecedents. So if you overeat, then maybe you do so as you are angry, then at that point, you go to the fridge, select some food, get a plate, sit down whilst watching TV and gorge yourself. In this chain of action then you can look to disrupt the chain, either by pausing between each stage, or by adopting some arbitrary action instead.

If you are trying to encourage new behaviour then what you can do is to set up a special set of antecedents and only perform the action there and to reinforce every time you do it, so you set up some stimulus control between the antecedent and the outcome.

You can also use precommitment, to decide to do something tomorrow and set up antecedents, these can be aide memoires, reminder or such like. Also think about using self-instructions, i.e. the opposite of NATS.

Chapter 9 Planning for change

The features of a good plan

A good plan has

1.       Rules that state the techniques to use in certain situations

2.       Goals and sub goals

3.       Feedback on progress from self-observation

4.       Comparison on progress between self-observation and goal achievement

Rules

You need to set yourself rules and the rewards that you get for following them, I will eat three meals a day when I’m at home and every time I do I can buy myself something. Each rule should be stated in terms of situation\technique\reward.

Goals and sub goals

These act as milestones and should be heavily reinforced! Each goal and sub goal will have its own set of rules attached. The sub goals will be as a result of shaping.

Feedback gathering

You need to monitor your performance against targets to see how you’re progressing, whether the rules are working and the efficacy of the techniques and rewards. So this is the same as the self-observation that enabled you to create the plan in the first place, by being aware of your antecedents, behaviours and consequences.

The contract

Once you have established your plan, then you should write it out and make it explicit and clear.

Chapter 10 Is it working? Analysing the data

Data looks to answer the question am I making progress, is the goal right. On the basis of this you modify your techniques and goals. If you don’t get data then you will seriously misjudge as most people increase their goals on the basis of new performance levels.  If your targets change then you need a new baseline to measure against. Both success and failure are data that can be used to adjust your techniques to maximise your performance.

Chapter 11 Termination

The time to stop with your plan is when you plan goals are performed naturally. You can still arrange the environment to reinforce your target behaviour but in a less formalised way. A good way to check if your target behaviour is solid is to use stimulus generalisation and to try it in a number of different situations.  You may also want to build in resistance to extinction by using intermittent reinforcement (Thinning).

There is always a risk of stopping too soon, so the wisest thing to do is to keep observing for a period after the plan has stopped to ensure you are still on track

If you do lapse or relapse, then you need to reinstate your plan as quickly as possible to ensure you return to target behaviour

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1

People in therapy want to change. Change their emotions, change their behaviours. So what causes the current problem emotion\behaviour? Psychoanalysts, proponents of the medical model, trait theorists would all argue that there are internal causes. Psychoanalysts would argue its drive conflict that causes it. Medical model proponents would argue it’s a chemical\genetic deficiency. Trait theorist would argue that it’s a personality.

What all of these theorists miss out is the effect of the environment, people, places and things. The relations between self and environment one is a dynamic one. The self perceives the environment and they do so due to their mood, past experiences and goals. The self also changes the environment by interacting with it. Likewise the environment changes the individual, by talking to it, raining on it, or leaving a bright new penny in front of it to be picked up.

Emotion and behaviour is context dependent, thus to change is to change the interaction between self and environment.  Once you achieve your goal you need to keep it, thus change is a process.

To achieve change then you need to be clear on

1.       Your desires to produce goals

2.       Planning, you need to plan how to achieve your goal

3.       Information, to find out how, to understand the situations where you can achieve your desires. Information about yourself, your capabilities and information about the environment where you can achieve your goals

4.       Plan modification. In light of changing information you need to adapt your goal to suit

Chapter 2

To achieve goals then you need

1.       Specify target behaviour

2.       Plan

3.       Monitor

4.       Implement

5.       Adjust plan

6.       Rewards

To specify target behaviour puts reality on your plan if your target behaviour is unrealistic and unspecifiable then this is the incarnation of your goal, so this should be adjusted.  As you monitor your target behaviour you look at circumstantial modulators, you understand punishments and rewards. This does two things, one it makes you a self-observer and two it provides you with ideas as to how to achieve your plans.  As you observe yourself you slow down and in this process you take a more conscious engagement with your target behaviour which does actually modify that behaviour.

Chapter 3

To get a goal you need to specify it in terms of contextual behaviours. Doing it in this way enables you to be able to take specific action. It also enables you to observe and learn about your current situations and to learn what are the modulators of your target behaviour.

To specify a vague problem in contextual behavioural terms if you struggle

1.       List examples of target behaviour and abstracts the commonality

2.       Ask yourself what things would be like if you achieved your goals

3.       Always specify target behaviour in situation

4.       Move from using labels to observation, depressed, shy are labels find out what the actual behaviour\situation circumstances are to get more data

If the problem is non-performance, e.g. I want to do more exercise

1.       Find out what you are doing in the situation when you should be doing it

2.       Try to specify the goal in positive terms, as you can only really act towards taking action, rather than not taking it, as it always leaves an absence that needs to be filled

3.       Find out the chain of action that would lead to the behaviour you want and you may well find a gap. If you can’t do this, then use modelling of other people, or get advice or use your imagination of the situation. Doing this can provide ideas as to how to produce your chain of action, or see ways in which you actively prevent  the chain being completed

If the problem is non-behavioural e.g. I want to be slim then

1.       Specify in terms of the behaviours that add to and reduce the ability to achieve target behaviour

2.       Again use chain of action analysis to provide steps to achieve

If the problem is complex

1.       Again chain of action analysis to break down into small achievable units

2.       Use observation to understand the situation, then observe again to find out what really is the problem. Successive observation iteration will enable you to find the root issues in a problem that may not be that complex.

Chapter 4

Self-observation is critical to change. It enables you to understand the scope of the problem, what you do and how often. It also provides information about the situations in which you do it and the consequences of doing it.

Firstly with self-observation you need to do an ABC analysis. This provides information about the situation and its effects.  You may also want to provide a before behaviour ABC and an after. This provides in greater relief the stimuli that led to the target behaviour, that in some way set up the situation such that you behaved in a certain way. If you then extend the analysis to provide an ABC analysis of a few examples of the target behaviour then you can see these emerging and you might find a new aspect of the situations that is very influential in providing stimuli for the target behaviour.

When you have done an ABC analysis you know some more about yourself and the target behaviour. After that then you need do count the instances of the behaviour either numerically, or in terms of intensity or duration. Counting in this way provides you with more self-observation and what this does it tap into the reactive effect.  When people are watched they perform differently, when you watch yourself then you likewise act differently. If you can count prior to starting your plan then you provide a baseline which then enables you to gauge success of your plan.

Your counting also may provide situational information, such that I always struggle at 4pm and during the week, which again may aid information to be able to formulate interventions.

People can have difficulty doing this as either their behaviour is unconscious or unpleasant. If it is the former then you need to actively do the behaviour whilst monitoring, and practise monitoring. If it is unpleasant then you need to make this the plan and apply behavioural principles to help you do it. Using reward for counting can really help.

Chapter 5

Behaviour is learnt in 3 ways

Through

1.       Consequences

2.       Conditioning, where you associate a cue with an outcome

3.       Modelling peoples behaviours

Consequences: can either be positive or negative reinforcement. Positive means something good happens, and negative means something bad is taken away. Punishment is also a consequence and can be either an unpleasant event or a reduction in pleasurable events.  Behaviour is strengthened by reinforcement. If that reinforcement isn’t there then the behaviour is extinguished, an intermittent reinforcement being harder to extinguish.

Negative reinforcement can promote avoidance learning, where you avoid an unpleasant outcome by not doing something. This is hard to change as you never learn that the consequences have changed.

Conditioning:antecedents in our environment are stimulus or cues to reinforced behaviour. If there is a consistent relation between stimulus and reinforcement then the behaviour becomes semi-automatic and is said to be under stimulus control.  Some behaviour becomes reflexive, where it is automatic, you can see this when you shut your eyes when you sneeze. Conditioned learning is where you associated an unconditioned response with a neutral stimuli, such that the neutral stimuli produces a conditioned response, and thus is now a conditioned stimuli. So if a person when shot at ducks this is the unconditioned stimulus and response, they may then associate the bang of a cars exhaust with his and this neutral stimuli then makes them duck.

In therapy then you want to understand the positive and negative reinforcement from an act, what is it that makes you want to do this act. You also want to understand how this act has been motivated, is it by the consequences, the operant behaviour, or is it by conditioned associated to some other event that produces this behaviour.

For operant behaviour then what you would do is look to extinguish the reinforcement directly and also by providing other ways that you can achieve the reinforcement. For conditioned behaviour then you seek to break the links between the unconditioned and the conditioned.

Chapter 6

A large part of our motivation for behaviour is the consequences of it. Working out what the positive and negative reinforcements for these are can help understand your behaviour and pave the way to do something about it. Positive reinforcement is getting the good stuff, negative reinforcement is not getting the bad stuff.  So if you have B1 that you are trying to change into B2, then you work out what the positive reinforcers are for B1, then try to either reduce them, or to put them onto B2.  Behaviour that is motivated by consequences is known as operant behaviour. If you can reduce the positive reinforcement break the link, then this is known as extinction.  Extinction is harder to weaken when the reinforcement is intermittent. Likewise when negative reinforcement produces avoidance where you don’t get the thing you are averse to, this is quite hard to shift as you no longer realise that the bad stuff won’t happen when you behave.

If something is hard to shift, or you can’t see what the reinforcers are, then you can use imagined extinction where you imagine the scene in vivid detail without the reinforcement or even something quite nasty happening.

So the best way to get B2 to happen is to positively reinforce it. If you can’t find anything then you can use the Premack principle and choose a behaviour b3 which is relatively neutral in terms of pleasure but more frequent than b2 and make doing b3 contingent on b3.

Using reinforcement to its full effect.

1.       Ensure reinforcement as soon after behaviour as possible

2.       You can use shaping to ensure rapid reinforcement

3.       Only use reinforcers that are potent, so you can wear them out

Chapter 7

To create new behaviours there are certain techniques to use

1.       Shaping

2.       Incompatible behaviours

3.       Imagination

4.       Rehearsal

5.       Modelling

Shaping takes the new task such as for me fishing and breaks it down into its component parts. Each part needs to be small enough to be achievable. The exercise of shaping then enables you to get a better understanding of the task which gives you how much resource is required to do the task, what’s the impact of the task, what’s the temporal implications of learning the task etc. What it also does is enable you to attach reinforcement to each part such that you can reward yourself for getting closer to achieving the task, and thus make the task more achievable.  As you perform the sub tasks of the task, then perform the step, get reinforcement, repeat the step until you are happy with it then move onto the next one.

Problems that you can face in shaping are

1.       Defining the shape

a.       If you struggle to shape then look to a model to see how they do it, by observation, or take advice from someone as to how they do it.

2.       Plateaus

a.       See if  the next step can be shaped

b.      If it isn’t this is a natural part and be patient

c.       After you have been patient maybe you have come to the end of your skill\interest in this task and therefore you should abandon it

3.       Cheating

a.       People can reinforce when they haven’t achieved their step, this being the case get a third party to give reinforcements

4.       Losing will power

a.       Often with will power it’s actually a problem with shaping, so the steps are too big

One difficulty with shaping is that you need to have effective reinforcers, so stage one in shaping is to define a list of contingent pleasurable reinforcers, also as you need to be able to repeat each step until you are happy with it then you need to be able to keep your reinforcers fresh. One way would be to use imagined reinforcers.

Incompatible behaviour

Whenever you want to produce a new behaviour it is going to be replacing an existing one. So I want to have better social skills, this is going to replace my poor social skills. As removing something is harder than doing something new, then you can use an incompatible behaviour to do this. 

There are two types of incompatible behaviour

1.       The desired replacement of the original behaviour

2.       A preferred replacement of the original behaviour

3.       Something that is incompatible with the original behaviour

As soon as you have the incompatible behaviour then reinforce it. Sometimes the incompatible behaviour can be done before the original behaviour, e.g. relaxing before the exam, or sometimes during, social anxious persons, makes a note of what everyone is wearing in a room.

Rehearsal

The best way to introduce new behaviour is to rehearse it in situation. If this isn’t available then you can do it using imagination

Using Imagination you can

6.       Imagine applying incompatible behaviour in situation

1.       Imagined reinforcement

2.       Imagine a role model achieving what you want to

3.       Imagine applying new skill

4.       Move up a shaped\feared hierarchy

Chapter 8

Antecedents have an impact on behaviour, some antecedents have stimulus control whereby they are positively reinforced and become a semi-automatic way of behaving. They do this by continually being associated with reinforcement.  Even if there isn’t stimulus control then behaviour is done in certain situations and there are prompts, cues to certain behaviour. Thus for smoking you smoke when you are angry say, or when you need a break. Through understanding what the antecedents to your behaviour are then you can learn to do something about it.

So the task here is to identify all the antecedents to your undesired action.  The first option to deal with these is to avoid these situation and reinforce this behaviour, then one by one use reinforcement to deal with the antecedents. You can deal with the antecedents by imagined rehearsal.

If the antecedents are strong and have stimulus control then there are other options. The antecedents with stimulus control have a long chain of consequences that themselves become other antecedents. So if you overeat, then maybe you do so as you are angry, then at that point, you go to the fridge, select some food, get a plate, sit down whilst watching TV and gorge yourself. In this chain of action then you can look to disrupt the chain, either by pausing between each stage, or by adopting some arbitrary action instead.

If you are trying to encourage new behaviour then what you can do is to set up a special set of antecedents and only perform the action there and to reinforce every time you do it, so you set up some stimulus control between the antecedent and the outcome.

You can also use precommitment, to decide to do something tomorrow and set up antecedents, these can be aide memoires, reminder or such like. Also think about using self-instructions, i.e. the opposite of NATS.

Summary

Ok so what’s all the about behaviourism. Well the basic idea is that behaviour happens through two reason, cause and effect and that all behaviour happens in a situation.

There are some antecedents that produce behaviour in an automatic way, i.e. reflexes and some in a semi-automatic way, i.e. whenever I’m angry then I shout at people. With consequences then we do things to achieve things this can either be positive reinforcement, getting some pleasure, or negative reinforcement avoiding some pain.

Antecedents and consequences also merge in terms of stimulus and cues. There are stimuli in a situation that we have associated with certain consequences so that we always stop at red lights, as if we don’t then we know people are going to give us dirty looks, we may crash etc. etc.

So to modify behaviour then you need to do the following:

1.       Observe

2.       Plan

3.       Act

Easy really!!

To create new behaviour, then you need to do the following

1.       Gain information about the new behaviour from observation or conversation

2.       Plan

3.       Act

Again easy really!!

To modify behaviour

In the observation stage then what you need to do is to analyse the situation in terms of antecedent and consequence. For antecedents then you need to know what has what the stimulus are, what has stimulus control and what the situations are that cause the behaviour. Then you need to look to see what the consequences are and how they are reinforced.

On an understanding of this your plan should look to detail all antecedents that are under stimulus control and see to remove them from that using extinction, i.e. ensure that you do not reinforce that behaviour in a situation. So for instance if getting angry makes me shout, and people then do what I say. I should look to try to shout in a way that they won’t do what I say, hmm that’s a bad example, ok when I’m tired I eat pizza and rest on the sofa, so having pizza is associated with rest, then whenever I have pizza I continue what I’m doing.

Other ways to remove antecedents from stimulus control is to look at the chain of behaviour that results in them. There will be quite a long chain of behaviour and consequence, the consequence then turns into an antecedent that results in the antecedent that has stimulus control. Breaking this chain early will disrupt the stimulus control.  You can do this using pauses, or alternative behaviours to break the chain.

Working with consequences, then first of all we can look to get the reinforcements in different ways. Secondly we can start to reinforce the desired behaviour.

To create new behaviour then first of all what we need to do is to shape it, i.e. break the task down into small units and then reinforce each unit as they’re done. Doing it this way enables us to both understand the task better and also get reward each time we achieve so motivate behaviour. If we are only rewarded every six months it will be impossible to carry on behaving in that fashion without reward. You can also enable new behaviour with the Premack principle, finding something that you do with greater frequency than the desired behaviour and make the existing behaviour contingent on the new behaviour.

If we are trying to stop behaving in a certain way then we must find a new way to behave. To stop the old way, we can avoid the antecedents that cause it, we can start performing incompatible behaviours with the old behaviour, but whatever we do, we need to find a new behaviour in that situation.

Key Concepts

1.       Shaping

a.       Break tasks into smaller units and reinforce

2.       Chains of action

a.       Will always be prior to an item with stimulus control

3.       Reinforcement

a.       Must be contingent

4.       Behaviour is always in a context

5.       Stimulus control

6.       Extinction

a.       Intermittent reinforcement increases resistance to extinction

7.       Incompatible behaviour

8.       Observation changes behaviour

9.       Modelling

a.       Enables new behaviour

10.   Imagination

a.       Used to rehearse reinforcement, extinction

11.   Premack principle

12.   Goals

a.       must be concrete and specific to act on

13.   Stimulus Generalisation