SCRED Life Skills - Behavior Basics

Topics for Educators

Behavior Basics

Learn about the science behind human behavior and how we change behavior patterns in schools.

Video for general audiences (9:07)

A relatively brief and simple explanation that is appropriate for all school employees.

Video for specialists (26:57)

A thorough deep dive that is aimed at any staff who create individual behavior plans for students.

How does behavior work?

Behavior is Relative

When we hear the word “behavior” in schools, often, our minds automatically jump to “bad behavior,” as if the two terms are equivalent and interchangeable. In fact, a student smiling and pleasantly greeting his teacher is engaging in “behavior” every bit as much as another student shoving a peer on the playground. Behavior is expansive—anything a person says or does.

To communicate accurately, then, we must add labels such as “expected/unexpected behavior,” “appropriate/inappropriate behavior,” or “desired/undesired behavior.” These terms are used because the appropriateness of any behavior is in the eye of the beholder(s) and dependent on the situation. The same behavior (e.g., shouting), can be undesirable in some situations (e.g., in the soup aisle at the grocery store) but desirable in others (e.g., on the football field during practice).

Behavior is Predictable

Conditions or events that occur immediately preceding a behavior are referred to as antecedents. This could be a worksheet being set on a student’s desk, another student walking past them, a greeting from a teacher, etc.

Setting events (sometimes referred to as “slow triggers”) are factors that make a behavior more or less likely to occur following the same triggering antecedent. For example, a student who slept for three hours the night before and did not receive their anti-anxiety medication—when corrected by a teacher—may be more likely to respond with undesired behavior than the same student if they had gotten a full night’s sleep and received their medication. In this case, the lack of sleep and medication did not directly trigger the behavior but may have contributed to the likelihood the student reacts with undesired behavior.

Figure A—Grilling Analogy: If we think of an undesired behavior as a fire, this analogy puts the rest of these terms in perspective. The lighter fluid (i.e., setting events) sets the stage, the match (i.e., antecedent) is the immediate trigger, and the brats (i.e., maintaining consequence) represent the reinforcement received. Credit: Clay Cook

Following any behavior, there is a consequence. A consequence is any event that occurs immediately after the behavior. This includes intentional consequences (i.e., ones we "give"), but it also includes natural consequences. It could be, for example, someone smiling at the student, someone taking away a preferred item, or the student getting hurt.

Consequences fall into the categories of "reinforcement" and "punishment." While "punishment" often has a negative connotation, these are both neutral terms that are exclusively defined by the effect they have on behavior (see below).

Figure B—Reinforcement and Punishment: This can sound confusing if you're new to the terminology, but bear with us. It helps to always remember that "reinforcement" = behavior MORE likely to occur, while "punishment" = behavior LESS likely to occur.

Behavior is Functional

When the consequence of a behavior is reinforcement, the behavior is maintained (i.e., it’s likely to happen again). We refer to these maintaining consequences as the “functions of behavior.”

These functions are based on what we can verify through observation and therefore confirm as a certainty. The effect of a student’s internal attitudes, intentions, etc. (e.g., wanting to be viewed as powerful or in control) cannot be confirmed through observation and are inherently subjective. In order to be objective, we determine functions based only on the observable consequences of behavior.

How functional a behavior is to a student is dependent on that individual student’s preferences. For example, say that Trevor, Jerry, and Sam’s teacher promises to reward the class with a pizza party if the average score on a test is a B. Trevor loves pizza, Jerry doesn’t feel strongly about it, and Sam hates it. All other things being equal—we could say that studying behavior will be most functional for Trevor, and Trevor is the most likely to study hard for the test.

Possible Functions of Behavior:

Obtain attention from adult(s)
Obtain attention from peer(s)
Obtain access to an activity
Obtain a pleasant sensory stimulus
Obtain a tangible object
Escape/avoid attention from adult(s)
Escape/avoid attention from peer(s)
Escape/avoid an activity
Escape/avoid an aversive sensory stimulus

FAQ: Are you sure power and control aren’t functions of behavior?

It can feel intuitive to observe an interaction and infer that power and control are influencing the behavior of the people involved. Think of a pair of middle school boys who often play video games together. Whenever they disagree about what game to play, the larger boy punches the smaller boy on the arm and teases him. When this occurs, they end up playing the game preferred by the larger boy. An observer might observe these interactions and report that the larger boy desires power and control over the smaller boy.

We can’t objectively measure power and control. We can’t add or remove it, and consequently it’s not operational for us. We may choose to explain the behavior with it, but we can’t operate on that explanation to design an effective intervention. We can, however, break it down and realize that the larger boy is obtaining access to a preferred activity. That access is likely the function of the larger boy’s behavior. We can add or remove access to that preferred activity, and therefore we can operate on our knowledge of the function and design an effective intervention based on it.

Big takeaway: We cannot infer intent. Consider what you know for a fact, what you can observe and measure. You can always break behavior down to deduce a function that is operational.

FAQ: Say that my student, Norman, loves using a tablet computer and eating cookies, but whenever an adult offers him these things as reinforcers, he rejects them. Isn’t the function of Norman’s behavior to obtain power and control?

We try to avoid jargon, but to understand what’s going on here, it helps to understand the concepts of establishing operations and abolishing operations. Establishing operations increase the current effectiveness of some stimulus, object, or activity as reinforcement. Abolishing operations decrease something’s effectiveness as reinforcement. Establishing operations and abolishing operations are very similar to setting events, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

To better understand how this works, let’s talk about Brad, an anxious introvert who typically leaves parties fairly quickly. Because large social events are aversive to Brad, his behavior of leaving parties is negatively reinforced because he escapes something he dislikes. Brad’s traits of anxiety and introversion are establishing operations because they increase the effectiveness of that reinforcement. Ingesting alcohol might be an abolishing operation for the behavior of leaving the party because it decreases the effectiveness of the negative reinforcement. Brad feels less anxious after ingesting alcohol, the party is less aversive, and he feels less motivation to escape it.

Now let’s circle back to your student, Norman. We can deduce that an abolishing operation is at play. Something in Norman’s environment (likely the act of an adult offering him options) decreases the effectiveness of iPad time and cookies as reinforcers.

It might be that Norman has aversive relationships with many adult authority figures in his life, and pairing an adult authority figure with a normally preferred activity or item decreases its value to Norman. Activities or items that Norman typically doesn’t prefer might temporarily become preferred because the adult doesn’t want him to have them. This would be an establishing operation. Or, the function of Norman’s behavior may simply be to escape adult attention, which is aversive to him at that moment.

What happens when we intervene to modify behavior?

So, we take a student who — when faced with particular setting event(s) and antecedent(s) — typically engages in an undesired behavior in order to access a functional, maintaining consequence. Our objective is to replace that undesired behavior with one that is desirable.

The easiest first step is to teach the student a functionally-equivalent replacement behavior. In order to be “functionally equivalent,” the consequence for the behavior must be comparable to that of the behavior it is replacing. It has to get the student the same thing that the undesired behavior did.

Figure C—Behavior Pathways Chart: This is a model of how behavior is modified.

For example, take a student who has repeatedly shouted at her teacher when math worksheets are being passed out. The student doesn’t like math worksheets, and when she shouts at her teacher, she is referred out of the classroom, escaping an activity that she finds aversive. In order to replace this behavior, we could teach the student to request a break. Faced with the same triggering antecedent (presentation of a non-preferred activity), the student would instead request a break and leave the classroom with the teacher’s permission. The student still escapes the aversive activity, but the behavior is more desirable to those around her.

Of course, we can’t stop there. In this example, the teacher would likely not want the student to take a break every time they need to complete math work. In order to intervene successfully, we need to teach the student to engage in a desired replacement behavior, which may or may not be functionally equivalent. If working independently in class is our desired behavior, we might reinforce it by providing the student with a sticker following every 10 minutes that she spends in class working on her math worksheets. The function of the desired behavior (working independently) is totally different (i.e., obtaining a desirable item versus avoiding a non-preferred activity). We often work to promote functionally-equivalent replacement behaviors and desired replacement behaviors simultaneously. The former is key because it is quick to establish and meets the student’s needs while the more difficult process of teaching more complex skill(s) and shifting the student’s motivations occurs.

How do we intervene to modify behavior?

Acquisition and Fluency

Teaching is how we help students acquire and develop fluency in behavior skills.

In a controlled instructional setting, we tell students what a behavior skill does and doesn't look like. We help students to understand when it’s needed and why it’s important. We model the skill (e.g., role play, videos), help students to practice, and provide feedback.

Performance and Generalization

When used together, these strategies amount to a collective “push and pull” effect that disrupts the old pattern of undesired behavior while encouraging the student to perform their replacement behavior skills:

Prevention strategies are things we do to make undesired behavior less likely to occur and desired behavior more likely to occur. They include changes to instruction, interaction strategies, the physical environment, etc.
Reinforcement strategies, which entail providing the student with something they prefer or taking away something they consider aversive, are things we do after we see a desired behavior that make it more likely we’ll see that behavior again.
Response strategies are things we do after we observe an undesired behavior that make it less likely we’ll see that behavior again. They involve one or more of the following: neutralizing/withholding the reinforcement that a student would have otherwise received following an undesired behavior (e.g., planned ignoring if the student would have otherwise obtained attention), taking away something the student prefers (e.g., losing a privilege), or providing the student with something they find aversive (e.g., a corrective conversation with an adult).

Figure D—Learning Hierarchy: In order to build new behavior skills, students must acquire and develop fluency in them (through teaching) and then they must learn to perform and generalize these skills across situations and settings.

Figure E—Behavior Pathways Chart with Strategies: Think about this in terms of "when." We need to use different categories of strategies before, during, and after a behavior in order to intervene effectively.

"Can't Do" or "Won't Do"?

Often, the answer to this question is "A little Column A, a little Column B." Let's talk about why.

The flowchart below is designed to help schools match a student with appropriate behavior intervention strategies. Again, we use teaching to support acquisition/fluency of skills that a student "can't do" (i.e., left half of the flowchart). We use prevention, reinforcement, and response strategies to support performance/generalization of skills the student "won't do." These "won't do" strategies should be selected based on the function of the undesired behavior we are trying to replace (i.e., right half of the flowchart).

Figure F—Behavior Intervention Flowchart: When providing interventions, we typically need to address both acquisition/fluency deficits (AKA "can't do") as well as performance/generalization deficits (AKA "won't do").

After reviewing the flowchart above, you may assume that "can't do/won't do" is a black and white distinction. For a single behavior skill, that might be true.

However, when you think about “the big picture,” we are typically trying to increase proficiency in multiple skills simultaneously, and each student's degree of proficiency will vary across skills. We can identify many behavior skills, both basic, pre-requisite skills and more advanced, integrative skills. This results in a complex web of relationships.

With that in mind, an effective behavior intervention will often tackle both the "can't do" and the "won't do" by using all four elements — teaching, prevention, reinforcement, and response strategies — in order to help a student learn and apply a variety of interdependent skills.

Figure G—Skill Connections Diagram: This diagram is designed to help people visualize the complex web of skill relationships that often necessitates the use of both "can't do" strategies (i.e., teaching) and "won't do" strategies (i.e., prevention, reinforcement, and response strategies).

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