PSYB45H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Starting Pistol, Chopsticks, Intellectual Disability
Document Summary
A procedure called shaping can be used to establish a behavior that the individual never performs. The behavior modifier begins by reinforcing a response that occurs with a frequency greater than zero and that at least remotely resembles the final target behavior. Shaping can be defined as the development of a new operant behavior by the reinforcement of successive approximations of that behavior and the extinction of earlier approximations of that behavior until the new behavior occurs. Shaping is sometimes referred to as the method of successive approximations. There are five aspects or dimensions of behavior that can be shaped. These are topography, frequency, duration, latency, and intensity (or force): topography is the spatial configuration or form of a particular response (i. e. , the specific movements involved). Printing a word and writing the same word are examples of the same response made with two different topographies.
