Behavior Consulting, Training, Pet Sitting

 Why Behaviors Recur

Antecedent → Behavior → Consequence
—  A behavior is anything that can be observed and measured.
—  Behaviors, in any animals, recur because they’re reinforced. A behavior occurs and is reinforced by some consequence that follows it.
—  This increases the probability that when the same or similar antecedent event presents the animal is likely to perform the behavior again in an effort to earn the reinforcing consequence.
—  In order to change the behavior we can change the antecedent or consequence.

Antecedents
—  The events preceding the behavior are often a series (distant antecedents) culminating in a discriminative stimulus (SD) immediately before the behavior occurs.
—  If the series of distant antecedents becomes a consistent pattern, it can cause the animal to begin reacting to the pattern as it has with the SD.
—  Disrupting that pattern can change the behavior.

Consequences
—  A reinforcing consequence is anything the animal sees as reinforcing.
—  The consequence is reinforcing for the animal regardless of how it may be viewed by any other animal or person.
—  As the saying goes, even negative attention is attention.

So what? Here are some examples of how this plays out.

You want to clean your dog’s face but it doesn’t want it cleaned.
Antecedent – you touch his face with a cloth
Behavior – he snaps at the hand
Consequence – hand goes away

Trying to take away a chew your dog wants to keep
Antecedent – you reach for the chew
Behavior – he snaps at the hand
Consequence – hand goes away & he keeps the chew

Scratches for food and you think it’s cute
Antecedent – dog goes where food has appeared in the past
Behavior – dog scratches
Consequence – you give him food

I’ll post tomorrow on how to use a → b → c to change behaviors.