BOOST U! 002 | Not So Simple: Complex Schedules of Reinforcement and Conditional Discriminations

Maddie Duke (00:04):
Welcome back to another episode of Boost U. We are super happy to be back with another episode. I am Maddie Duke.
Corey Robertson (00:13):
And I'm Corey Robertson.
Maddie Duke (00:15):
And today we are going to get a little bit more into the task list and some topics and questions that our students have expressed wanting answers to. So today we are going to focus specifically on a couple areas within content area B. So the goal is to cover complex schedules of reinforcement and then simple and conditional discriminations. And Corey just shared with me that on the day that we're recording this, he just taught complex schedules of reinforcement. So great timing.
Corey Robertson (00:53):
Fresh in my mind. Yeah.
Maddie Duke (00:54):
Perfect. Yeah. So I don't know, do you think that it's beneficial if we cover like, real quick, simple schedules of reinforcement or just
Corey Robertson (01:07):
Oh, not a bad idea. I'd give it some context. Yeah. you know, the thing I think about with schedules of reinforcement is they're basically the rules by which we deliver the reinforcer. And, I think when we learn about them, it can really be tempting to think that they only apply to laboratory settings. And it was just sort of the process of figuring this stuff out. But they definitely are real life applications and understanding them will make you a better behavior analyst. So yeah, our simple schedules, well, the two main criteria that we can use to talk about delivery of the, of that reinforcing stimulus is based on the rate of responding, how many responses it takes you to produce that reinforcer. And that's called a ratio schedule. The word rates rate in there, you can also think of it as the ratio of responses to the reinforcer deliveries.
Corey Robertson (01:57):
How many do you have to do before you get the, the pay, right? And then the other is interval. And that's tricky because there's still a response required. The interval is basically a period of unavailability. You can't get it until the interval expires. And then the first response produces the the reinforcer and the interval resets. So those, we have ratio interval schedules, and then we can have two ways of that criteria being applied. The first is fixed in which the criteria stays the same, and in a variable schedule, it, it randomizes around some value. And I always try to point out to students as well that this is pre-planned. We should have a list of, of numbers. We know we're waiting for the third response right now, or we're gonna be not reinforcing the behavior until, you know, five minutes has passed in this particular interval. It's not just, I feel like, because I think sometimes we loosely talk about these go, I'm on a VR five, I feel like I'm reinforcing every fifth correct response. No, you should have either an app that's generating those intervals for you, or you have a list of numbers that averages out to whatever that value is. Yeah. So those are specific
Maddie Duke (03:07):
Schedules specific to the clinical application because we can also look at, you know, a parent who's child is asking for a snack. We can also define their schedule of reinforcing that ask. But the parent doesn't necessarily have to have, I'm gonna use a VR three today.
Corey Robertson (03:26):
Right. We probably would just broadly classify as if they're on an intermittent schedule, and we know that for sure. Right? Yeah, exactly. And that's another important thing. These schedules of reinforcement produce very specific patterns of responding in non-human animals and also in humans. And so that becomes important when you talk about choosing the delivery of reinforcement. I've definitely seen clinical cases where somebody suggested one thing and I said, I don't think you wanna do that because here's the pattern you're gonna get, and I don't think that's what you want. So interval schedules are much better at, you know, getting a steady even pace of responding. Ratio schedules are more likely to produce bursts of responding, those sort of things. We, we do need to be aware of those. It isn't just laboratory stuff to be sure
Maddie Duke (04:12):
There's a, I can try to find it and link it in the description box of the podcast. But I took my advanced concepts class from Dr. Gokey and she assigned us a reading on the Passage of Laws by Congress.
Corey Robertson (04:32):
That's the one I was to mention that. Yeah.
Maddie Duke (04:34):
Wait, perfect. So, so you know, it too, they're scalloped responding and how they match you know, that fixed interval schedule, they increase the amount of laws that they pass right before towards the end. Yeah. Right before that reinforcement's available in the form of reelection.
Corey Robertson (04:53):
Yeah, I think that I call that affectionately the slacker slope and that's, I you know, that's kind of like deadline responding. And so it's a new excuse for us as behavioral analyst. You know, we're not procrastinators, we're just very often functioning on a fixed interval schedule. You know, I can work on this presentation, but it's not due until I get up on stage. So that's when I'm gonna be doing the, most of my work is right before exactly the reinforcement's coming even though I could probably do things to, to space it out.
Maddie Duke (05:24):
Okay, so let's get into some of these complex schedules. I'm just gonna go in order of our outline because I am so first we have a multiple schedule.
Corey Robertson (05:36):
So a multiple schedule just is alternating between two schedules. We've got one effect at a time. And then, oh, actually there's one missing here. Let's talk about this one first. Actually, let's back up just a second before we talk about multiple schedules, concurrent schedules. And the reason I like to talk about concurrent schedules first and foremost is because it's the only one that's available concurrently, simultaneously, the concurrent schedule is that you can go with this or you can go with that schedule, you know, you've got a choice. And it's how we evaluate choice responding. And somebody once said life is a bowl of concurrent schedules. 'cause We have lots of options. Right now you could be listening to this podcast, you could probably be doing something else that was more productive. I don't know, we want you listening to the podcast.
Corey Robertson (06:20):
But but definitely, and the matching law applies to concurrent schedules, but that's where they're both simultaneously in effect. And that kind of helps us, I think, make the distinction between a concurrent schedule and a multiple schedule where only one of them is in place at a particular time. And then the other key feature of a multiple schedule is that it is signaled. There are discrete stimuli associated with each schedule such that we can learn to distinguish or discriminate what schedules in effect at any given time. And, and again, this not about rules, it's not about verbal behavior. I give examples in class where I just do it, you know, if there's a green light on, it's an FR five maybe, and I can tap the desk five times in a row and get reinforcement, or the pigeon will, you know, peck five times and get reinforcement or the you know, rat will press a lever five times.
Corey Robertson (07:12):
It, they will figure these things out. But what you'll quickly see is a particular pattern of responding under that, you know, in my example, the green light condition. And then if the red light comes on, let's say it's an FI ten second schedule where the first response after 10 seconds produces reinforcement. And so what you'll likely to see is a pause of a couple of seconds and then slow responding until, okay, how long has 10 seconds been? Right? And so, and it just goes back. So green light, red light, multiple schedules, and those are probably there you have a real life example of how let you give that one. But there, there's definitely easy examples of multiple schedules in real life.
Maddie Duke (07:49):
Yeah. And I, I know these are fairly commonly used in the clinical setting as well. Especially a lot of Dr Greg Hanley's work involves multiple schedules in terms of. This card says that, you know, this is, it's my way, my turn to determine what activity we're working on. And then this color card is your way. I think that's, I think it's the my way procedure, the real life example that I was thinking of. I'm a child of divorced parents. This probably also applies to a lot of other situations, but I go back to, I'm at mom's house right now. That means I have these snacks available to me, and when I go to dad's house, these other snacks are available to me. And there's not a lot of overlap between those. And maybe that's not exactly your experience, but that was my experience is mom's house has this food and dad's house has this food. And that's multiple schedule
Corey Robertson (08:45):
Or requests, right? Like the schedule reinforcement is different, you know yeah. Classes, things like that. You know, in one class the teacher, you know, answers you, if you raise your hand on a consistent basis and the other one she doesn't. And so you learn, and, and that leads to that discrimination for sure. Multiple schedules. And then with mixed schedules, and that's the next one we cover because it is the same rule as a multiple schedule, but a mixed schedule. I like to think of it as there's no signal. So you're all mixed up. So going back to my working example of a an FR five versus an FI 10 seconds, well, now you don't know which one's in effect. So what do you do? And given that arrangement, well, if you can pop off five responses in less than 10 seconds and you produce the reinforcer, probably keep doing that, right?
Corey Robertson (09:33):
So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then I get reinforcement. But if that stops working, then I might switch over and start responding on my FI ten second pattern and see if that one response after a delay is consistent producing the reinforcer. So you gotta figure that out. And this also happens in real life, you know, we all have that teacher or person we're in a relationship with or whatever, who you cannot read. And every day is a different adventure you know, and one day this behavior might work for you, or the schedule might be in place and other days it isn't. Oh, I know I give the example. Sorry, go ahead.
Maddie Duke (10:07):
Well, I had a question about that because that is the, like, typical example. And right before I hopped on this meeting, I was like, if somebody's in like different moods, right? And so, you know, when they're in a bad mood, you can ask 'em for anything, ask 'em to blink at you, and they'll just stare, right? Because no reinforcement. And if they're in a good mood, they'll do whatever you want. But after you have figured out which mood they're in, let's say that like their mood always lasts all day, is it still a mixed schedule or does it now become a multiple schedule?
Corey Robertson (10:45):
Yeah, I'd probably say if you could discriminate, then it's not a mixed schedule anymore would be the idea, right? Yeah. And we do quickly learn to figure those things out, right? We were looking for those SDs. Yes. the other example I give still is and it's kind of funny to me because I used to have a laptop that was windows based and PC that computer, you never knew what it was gonna take to hop online. I had a USB drive a wireless adapter in it to update it to the most whatever the current you know, requirement was. This was years ago. And sometimes all you had to do was plug in that USB adapter and reconnect the internet. Other times you had to reboot the computer before we connected the internet.
Corey Robertson (11:25):
Other times you had to go and reset the router before we connected the internet. And it was the most frustrating thing because you never knew what schedule was in effect, what do I have to do today to make this work? Right? And so that's, I think of what a mixed schedule is. Something's gonna fix this. You know, there's a, there's a response requirement, but I have no way of discriminating what it is, so I'm just kind of gonna stay, you know go through it. So those are multiple and mixed. Then we go into the chained schedule. And a chained schedule is what it sounds like it's linking different requirements together. But there's signal changeover. So for example, and I like to keep running with the same example. If we have a chained FR five FI ten second schedule, green light comes on, you engage in the five responses.
Corey Robertson (12:08):
But now instead of getting the reinforcer, the red light comes on. Now that indicates that the next signal the next requirement is available, and you wait 10 seconds and then respond, right? FI 10 seconds. And then you would produce the reinforcer and the light would turn green again. So green light FR five red light, wait that 10 seconds, respond, get the reinforcer. And that's a chain schedule. And then a tandem schedule is a chained without a signal. So I, I just think of them as here's my, it's a weird and a mnemonic device, but bicycles have chains and there are tandem bicycles. So that's how I remember that tandem goes with chain. Those go together. It's the more complex one. I, you know, if it works, it's not weird, right? Yeah. So, so that's the tandem. And so, and the tandem examples two things I can think of.
Corey Robertson (12:59):
One would be when you're entering your password and on a computer, but you don't see the characters as you type. And I think everybody's experienced hitting that enter button that return key and it doesn't work 'cause you did something wrong, but it didn't tell you when you had no idea if you had completed each letter requirement correctly. And then the other example is for those who are old school video game cheat codes, right? Left, right, left, right, up, down, up down AB BA unlimited lives. Yeah. But again, it's a sequence of responses that you have to engage in. And there's no indication that you've completed any specific requirement like in a chain schedule. So that, that would be probably a real life example of a tandem schedule. The other one, combination locks too. Combination locks, right? Yeah. You gotta do 32, right? 42 left, 16, right. Whatever it is. But it doesn't tell you if you did it correctly before you move on to the next sequence. Right?
Maddie Duke (13:51):
The other tandem schedule that I thought of that I was so proud of myself, finger spelling, if you miss a letter the other person may not understand what you're trying to tell them. But as soon as your hand moves, you no longer have an SD to say which letter you just did, or what was two letters ago. So that's also a
Corey Robertson (14:13):
That's a good example. Yeah. Yeah. And then the last two on this list are the kind of weird ones. But they do come up an alternative schedule is an interesting arrangement. It's kind of like a concurrent schedule except only one's available at a time, but well, they're both available at the same time, but it's on one operant, so it's not really a choice, but it's a single response. But either one will produce the reinforcer and we actually use them to sort of show preferences for that. So again, I'd just like to run with the same examples. And if we're in an alternative FR five FI ten second, that would mean that either the fifth response or the first response after 10 seconds, we'll produce the reinforcer, right? But just think of it as like, maybe we only have one lever that we can press, but so in that situation now you're gonna start to see are you the kind of person that would rather just get your reinforcer more often by popping off those five responses, right? Or are you a person who'd rather just engage in one response every 10 seconds and just wait longer for the reinforcer? Right? And so that's what an alternative schedule would kind of produce that. I think that's another schedule that's used in the literature to sort of look at preferences for responding under different arrangements.
Maddie Duke (15:23):
Is that always the same operant? I thought that.
Corey Robertson (15:26):
I think so.
Maddie Duke (15:28):
Doesn't necessarily have to be, like, there's, I'll see a lot of examples of like, you can work on your math worksheet or your English worksheet, but whichever one you finish first, you're done. Is that not an alternative?
Corey Robertson (15:43):
Maybe I just feel like maybe that would still be a concurrent schedule. But I guess if the reinforcer the same and it's either one, then that, maybe that would be an alternative schedule. And this is where it gets kind of hard, right? Is when you look at, at real life examples, you know, we can never say this is not gonna be on the certification exam. I can never tell you with confidence. So anybody who does is wrong, you know? So I'm not gonna tell you, I'm not gonna say that alternative schedules are not gonna be on the BACB certification exam.
Maddie Duke (16:13):
They're not talked about it.
Corey Robertson (16:15):
But you could hear that sentence and take away the words. I'm not gonna say. I don't I would argue, and I think that Jim Carr would agree with me, that alternative schedules are probably not a minimal standard for behavioral analysts to safely practice. The, the task list just says use schedules of reinforcement. Our alternative schedule is a schedule of reinforcement. And it's interesting knowing it does have important applications, but if you're, if you're worried about that, or again, where we come up with examples, well is it, concurrent or is it alternate? It's probably not gonna come up. And then that last one is the conjunctive schedule. And I think of that as a combination between a chained and a concurrent, a concurrent a conjunctive schedule is you have a several components that have to be completed, but not in any specific order.
Corey Robertson (17:01):
They just all have to be completed. So you're an example reading and math both have to be completed, but I don't care which order you do them. And then you get your reinforcer. Examples I like to use are shopping lists. So you are either gonna go to the grocery store, you have all your ingredients for your recipe, but how you shop for them doesn't really matter as long as you have them all at the end. And then traveling, right? You're packing for a trip and you've got your clothes and your toiletries and your electronics and all that. But, but the order doesn't really matter. So you just have to get them all before you successfully, you know, leave for vacation. So
Maddie Duke (17:33):
I was a little confused when you said traveling, packing for traveling,
Corey Robertson (17:37):
Packing for traveling, yeah. Yeah. The,
Maddie Duke (17:39):
Well, actually traveling, because you do have to get to the airport before you can get on the plane, before you can That's true. Arrive at your destination. But packing, yeah,
Corey Robertson (17:46):
Order does matter there, but the packing doesn't really matter which order you you're packing as far in terms of your clothes and your toiletries and all that stuff. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, just kind of practicing with the definitions of these as we've kind of reviewed them and being able to have a good example. You know, I think when, when I was studying was always trying to explain things to someone else, I would just say the stuff out loud, okay, here's what this is. And so I think if you can do that you'll probably be able to recognize examples of these different schedules when you do them. And of course, we like to put examples on our boost Facebook page, and we've got lots of examples in the mock 10 product and also of course on the mock exam. So there's chances for students to practice those skills.
Maddie Duke (18:28):
Yes.
Corey Robertson (18:29):
That was a shameless plug.
Maddie Duke (18:32):
So we were actually talking about this before we pressed record today. I was today years old when I learned that simple and conditional discriminations are not that simple and that Cooper might not be correct about them. Essentially the TLDR is that everything's a conditional discrimination, basically. But what's a simple discrimination?
Corey Robertson (19:02):
Well, let's just start with the, maybe the definition of discrimination, which is responding in the presence of a stimulus. Because of a history of reinforcement and not responding in the absence of that stimulus because of a history of non reinforcement, right? And of course, that could also apply to punishment or extinction or those things. But when we discriminate, we behave differently given the circumstances. And the idea with a simple discrimination is that there's just a single SD, I show you a picture of apple and you say apple, but a conditional discrimination occurs when responding in the presence of a stimulus is conditional upon the presence of another stimulus. And so I can show you a picture of apple, and I can say, what is it? And the response, apple will be reinforced. But if I show you a picture of an apple, and I say, what color?
Corey Robertson (19:55):
Apple is not the correct response anymore, and that will not produce reinforcement for a individual with a learning history, when I say, what color is it? They're going to respond with red. Now the car didn't change, my verbal stimuli changed, right? I can now say, what color is it? And I hold up a picture of a banana and suddenly the same question, what color is it evokes a very differential response because of now the card has changed, the visual stimulus has changed, right? You're looking at a banana, as I'm saying, what color is it? What, what do you do with it would be another question I could ask with the same card. And all of those are gonna produce different responses, and they go on and on. It can be very complex. For example, I can say, give me an example of a mand that should produce a differential response, then define a mand.
Corey Robertson (20:48):
I can also ask you to define a tact. And all of a sudden it's a totally different response. So even within a question, you know, an arrangement of verbal stimuli, there are several factors there that are conditional. So I think the example you were talking about in the Cooper text, you know, we, we had had a verbal stimulus and an item, and I don't know. I think that may still be a conditional discrimination. It is just important to pay it to know about, to be aware of it, because we make these conditional discrimination so often. Yeah. You know when I say I, and that's where the autoclitics come in. I don't, we're not, haven't talked about verbal behavior, but I know we you and I had a conversation about the autoclitic and it's, they're everywhere. Everything Yeah. Those are a big part of conditional discrimination. I would like the largest chocolate chip cookie. In other words, don't give me a small oatmeal raisin cookie, you know, kind of thing. Those
Maddie Duke (21:42):
A small cookie or a large oatmeal raisin, like of these things matter,
Corey Robertson (21:46):
Right? All those, all those little details will produce a different response than the listener, right? And that's, that's the idea here behind conditional discriminations versus simple discrimination. There probably are some simple discriminations, they're hard to come up with though, because real quickly you started identify, well wait a second, maybe you're attending to this, you know, so
Maddie Duke (22:04):
Well, and I, I think of your initial example of a simple discrimination was holding up a card of an apple. And I think that you would know that it's a simple discrimination if reinforcement was available for any response, right? Whether I call it apple, whether I say it's red, whether I say food, right? Any of these are, if any of those are gonna be reinforced, and it's a simple discrimination because I'm only attending to that card and labeling it however I'm labeling it, right?
Corey Robertson (22:37):
Yeah. Because, yeah, so there's just one SD, but then again, you could even argue when I show you a picture of an apple, what are you attending to? Are you attending to the color? Are you attending to the shape? And, and there's some interesting studies on that too, right? Is when we're teaching, what is the person really looking at when they, when they learn Apple is apple, the shape is apple, the the color is apple. You know, what, what is it that defines the apple, you know, concept formation, all that kind of fun stuff. So yeah, I like your opening statement for this segment, which is simple discriminations may not be as simple as we thought, but they, you know. Yeah. But the idea is recognizing when complex discrimination are occurring, and those are conditional discriminations, sorry. And those conditional discriminations, it's the, the responding in one stimulus is conditional upon the other one. You gotta pay attention to both of them. Yes.
Maddie Duke (23:25):
And correct me if I'm wrong, we don't discriminate or distinguish between like two factor conditional discrimination, three factor, like it's all, we just call all of that conditional discriminations, right?
Corey Robertson (23:37):
Yeah. I don't think there's different terms for it. That certainly would be a level of functioning though, right? So as we acquire language, our ability to discriminate between more complex verbal stimuli definitely comes into play. So, you know we talk about, you know, two step and three step directions. Those are probably a form of conditional discrimination, right? And so there's probably a buildup there, you know, acquiring those abilities over time. But, but we just call 'em discrimination, just more than more than stimuli there. Right?
Maddie Duke (24:06):
Right. Okay. Cool. Well, to the listener, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Boost U. We hope you enjoyed this short form and that you learned something. If you did, we would love to hear about it. Email us. Our emails are in the description box. And we'll see you next time.