Why Your Distant Reinforcers Aren't!: The Myth, The Madness and The Fix. matters because it changes what a BCBA notices when decisions have to hold up in home routines, treatment sessions, interdisciplinary consultation, and health-related skill support.
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Join Free →In the laboratory, if a pigeon receives food more than a few seconds after pecking an illuminated disc, it will never learn to key peck to get food. This is a characteristic of reinforcement. It's instantaneous when it occurs as a natural phenomenon. When we set up artificial long-term reinforcement contingencies, IT'S NOT THE SAME THING! "Do your homework now, and you'll get video games later tonight" describes a reinforcement contingency, but behavior motivated by this description is rule-governed behavior with a special learning history. The thrust of the presentation is that rules describing reinforcement contingencies is NOT the same as real-time reinforcement and the stimuli that maintain problem behavior ARE real-time reinforcement. Learning Objectives:1. Participants will be able to describe the role of language in the use of distant reinforcers 2. Participants will be able to explain WHY distant reinforcers are not technically reinforcers at all 3. Participants will be able to describe how to determine if a conditioned reinforcer truly has any power to move behavior 4. Participants will be able to describe the 2 critical features of reinforcement. It must be both ________ and ________ 5. Participants will be able to explain to staff WHY knowledge of a contingency is not the same as real-time reinforcement
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1.5 | General |
Dr. Merrill Winston is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst who has worked in the field of Developmental Disabilities for over 35 years. He has worked in small group homes, large residential facilities, secured facilities, family homes, and schools and has worked with a broad population who exhibited behavior problems that ranged from mild to life-threatening. Dr. Winston is comfortable working with both verbal and non-verbal individuals and both children and adults with a range of diagnoses. His strengths are relating to direct-care staff in a manner that sets them at ease as well as working in real-time with children and adults. Dr. Winston excels in public speaking and has given numerous presentations at various professional conferences throughout the country. His areas of interest are crisis prevention and intervention, psychotropic medication usage with special populations, and the development and implementation of training programs designed to increase the skill levels of parents, professionals, teachers, and direct-care staff.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
279 research articles with practitioner takeaways
258 research articles with practitioner takeaways
231 research articles with practitioner takeaways
All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.