hello and welcome to APA made easy I'm Mauricio and today we'll be talking about schedules of reinforcement so schedule of reinforcement just means the contingency of the reinforcement which means how often you are reinforcing if you want a video on reinforcement click on one of the links up there I don't know which corner it is but yeah it's basically how often you're reinforcing so there's two types of reinforcement there's continuous reinforcement and intermittent reinforcement continuous reinforcement is when you reinforce after every correct response okay so sometimes this is put a CR continuous reinforcement another way to think about it is fr1 but I'll get into that later that stands for fixed ratio one we'll get to that so when you use continuous reinforcement when you're first learning a task or when you're trying to strengthen a behavior so that's continuous reinforcement reinforcing after every single response correct response the complete opposite of that is extinction extinction is when you never reinforce a response okay and everything in between continuous reinforcement and extinction is intermittent reinforcement so when do you use intermittent reinforcement you use it when you're trying to maintain behaviors that have already been established that's what you use intermittent reinforcement and if you think about it the real world functions with a lot of intermittent reinforcement you don't get reinforcement after every correct response you get it occasionally right so that's what keeps you doing those behaviors and we're going to get into what types of intermittent reinforcements there are so the main for our fixed ratio variable ratio fixed interval variable interval and we're gonna break it down the first thing we wanted to break down is ratio versus interval so ratio refers to the amount of responses you give okay so think of amount when you think of ratio interval refers to time so now let's talk about fixed versus variable I mean it kind of says it in a name right fixed is that it doesn't change it's the same in variable it changes each time they respond so what could take three responses one time can take five responses the next time and in interval the time interval changes between responses okay we're going to get into that when we talk about specifics but that's the basics of it fixed stays the same variable changes ratio is amount of responses and interval is a time interval okay got it with me so far alright now we're gonna go into specific schedules of reinforcement alright so let's talk about fixed ratio the easiest one to understand basically you need a certain amount of responses before you get reinforcement so these are usually abbreviated F are fixed ratio and then a number that number is how many responses you need so if it's an F R 3 that means you need to respond three times in order to get your reinforcement now remember earlier I said continuous reinforcement is a type of fixed ratio right well yeah it's an F R 1 which means that every response gets a reinforcement ok so continuous reinforcement is the same thing as saying F R 1 you could think about it that way so when is this good this is good if you want a high rate of responding but the thing is there's gonna be a pause after every time they get the reinforcements this is called the post reinforcement pause and it's classically seen in this type of schedule of reinforcement so an example of this is a token economy with ten tokens right they have to get ten tokens in order to get their reinforcement okay so they have to respond ten times get it took it for each one and once they get all ten then they can play or get the reinforcer so that's an example of an F R 10 because they need ten tokens a variable ratio is kind of the same as a fixed ratio except it's not the same amount of responses every single time it switches but the way you put the number at the end is by averaging how many responses are needed so let's say the first time after two responses they get reinforcement the next one after four responses they get reinforcement and then our next one after three responses they get reinforcement that's a B R three because it was an average of three responses to get the reinforcement so that's a variable ratio so this one is the least prone to extinction this is a strongest one if you want to maintain someone doing a certain action over and over again this is the one to use because they don't know when the reinforcement is coming if you come at any time and when they get it maybe there's a short time before they get another reinforcement maybe there's a lot of stretch they don't know so they keep going the classic example of this is a slot machine in Vegas okay they program those machines to give you enough reinforcement that you keep playing but you never know when you're gonna win and spoiler alert most of the time you lose that's why casinos are so rich so don't don't play the slot machines you're running a variable ratio schedule and you don't want a machine to be modifying your behavior right don't gonna happen that's how the robots take over all right so ratios are pretty easy to understand right it's the number of responses and it can either be fixed or variable pretty simple the interval is a little tricky so I'm going to spend a little time on it so we'll start with fixed interval so the number after F I is in minutes so if you need three minutes to respond it's an F I 3 so what are these minutes basically after you deliver a reinforcer let's say let's stick with a three minute example after you deliver the reinforcer three minutes have to pass before a reinforcer is available it doesn't mean that after three minutes you give another reinforcer no no it means three minutes have to pass and once the three minutes pass a correct response will get a reinforcer once they get the other reinforcer the timer starts again once they receive the reinforcer and three minutes have to elapsed again before they have the opportunity to get another reinforcer okay so it's not every three minutes they get reinforced it's every three minutes that pass after reinforcer they have the opportunity to get another reinforcer and then the timer starts again once they receive that reinforcer so this one if you're taking the test to become a behavior analyst they'll usually show you the graph because the graph is so unique to this schedule of reinforcement okay basically what's gonna happen is that you're gonna have what's called fixed interval scalloping and what a fixed interval scallop is is that the shape of a scallop is kind of rounded right so basically you have almost no behaviors right after the reinforcement obviously because they know that three minutes have to pass like they're not gonna get it if they respond right away right after but then as you gets to a three minute mark they're gonna start responding responding responding responding and they get that reinforcer and then they're back to now responding and then after it gets close to three minutes again they're gonna respond respond respond respond so it looks like this kind of like a a wave like a little cusp and that's because if we know that around three minutes is when the reinforcement is recharged or ready to go you're gonna start pressing the button or doing the the behavior as fast as you can to like get that reinforcer because you know it's almost available and then right after you get it you know it's not available for some time sort of stuff so that's what you get you get that scalping that's fixed interval and the last so we're gonna talk about is variable interval so similar to a fixed interval right except it's the average of time that needs to elapse before reinforcement is available so if after they respond correctly the reinforcer is ready in five minutes right and then after they respond again after those five minutes they respond again then it's available after three minutes and then it's available after four minutes that's an average of four so you would have a bi4 variable interval for what is this good for this is good for a steady rate of responding and an example would be like checking your email right uh you don't know when someone's going to send you an email but you check it every like I don't know how didn't you take your email hopefully not too much oh yeah let's say every 30 minutes every hour right you're not gonna start checking it more often you're gonna get emails from time to time you don't know when and that's gonna reinforce your behavior checking your email sometimes you get it sometimes you don't so now let's talk about applying this into the real world okay so what you want to start off with is continuous reinforcement when you're teaching a task right let's say they get it okay you're reinforcing after every behavior now what you want to do is called ratio thinning or thinning the schedule okay basically what that is is that you're gonna make it so that they don't get reinforcement after every single response why because the real world doesn't reinforce after every single response and also if it's not reinforced for a while they'll stop doing the behavior you want something like you know a variable ratio schedule where they don't know when the reinforcement is coming so keep engaging in the behavior and sometimes they'll get reinforcement sometimes they won't so that's called thinning the schedule okay you don't want to give me unfortunately after every single response now you gotta be careful because there's this thing called ratio strain if you thin it too much you're gonna get pushed back like major push back you're gonna get aggression you're gonna get non-responding you're gonna get pretty much defiance okay and that's because they're working too hard you're making them work too hard they're not getting reinforcement they're not seeing what's the point of engaging this behavior if they're not getting reinforced for it right so you wanna it's a it's a balance if you see ratio strain then you want to bring it back and reinforce more often the balancing act you do okay now let's do a little quiz to test your knowledge to see if you could guess which schedule of reinforcement I'm talking about okay you're in a class and your teacher likes giving pop quizzes okay so that keeps you studying what type of schedule of reinforcement is that okay so let's break it down pop quizzes unpredictable right you never know when they're coming so it's variable something does it require you to do a certain amount of responses to get this pop quiz no it's just it varies how much time will pass before you get the pop quiz and get reinforced with a good test score okay so it's variable interval next one you're going door-to-door selling newspaper subscriptions to people and you don't know who's gonna buy one and who's not gonna buy one by the way this is the first job I ever had selling newspapers door-to-door I'm so glad I'm not doing that anymore but what scheduled reinforcement is this okay if you said variable ratio schedule you are correct and that's because you know you don't know that every third house you're gonna sell a newspaper it's variable so it's variable and what determines if you sell a newspaper subscription how many houses you go to right now how much time elapsed or else you were just waiting a car for three minutes and then go and turn to sells a newspaper that doesn't make any sense it's how many houses you going to increases the chances of you sell newspapers so it is a variable ratio good job if you got it next one you have a teacher they likes giving weekly exams okay and do you notice that you start cramming a few days leading up to the exam let's say the exams on Friday by Thursday you are studying like crazy because you want to get a good grade what type of schedule reinforcement is this well it's weekly right so it's not variable so it's a fixed and it's every week interval fix interval and did you notice that you have the fixed interval scalloped in there yeah you're cramming your behavior of studying increases dramatically the days leading up to a test so that's fixed interval okay and last but not least a mouse has to press a lever ten times in order to get a treat what is it if you said fixed ratio you are correct and here's a bonus question for that Mouse I was pressing the lever ten times how would how would you abbreviate that type of scheduled reinforcement like with letters and numbers if you said f are ten you are correct fixed ratio ten responses all right that wasn't too bad was it you got this I think it's easy once you break it down to fixed versus variable and ratio versus interval and then you just mix them together and then if you're taking the test it's also good to know what the grass kind of look like okay and just remember a variable ratio most resistant to extinction all right I hope this helps if you found this helpful at all please 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