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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
50 Practical Ways to Alter the Relative Efficiencies
of Behaviors
Steve Ward, Teresa Grimes
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5542/2025.02.002
Whole Child Consulting, 3853 E. Riverside Drive Dunnellon, FL 34434, United States of America
Behavior analysts have long recognized the need to increase at least one behavior when attempting to decrease another and usually focus primarily upon increasing a wide variety of behaviors (White & Haring, 1980). But the strengthening of any behavior relative to another is not necessarily simple and records of empirically supported treatment options can be interpreted in an over-simplified manner. The current paper attempts to connect various treatment options across behaviors through a common principle—levels of one behavior will tend to increase and levels of another will tend to decrease when the first behavior is made more efficient than the second. The primary objective of the current paper is to articulate a wide variety of variable dimensions available to behavior analysts, teachers, and other professionals responsible for behavior change. In complex environments, many factors are beyond our control and many treatment options are non-viable. The greater the variety of treatment options available, the “larger the analyst’s toolbox”, the greater the chance that viable treatments will be found and that ineffective strategies can be effectively modified before being set aside. One recurring theme is that various forms of response blocking can and should be minimized and replaced with strategies that make more desirable behavior more efficient than less desirable behavior, leading learners to “choose” more desirable behavior. An additional objective of the paper is to reframe the debate about whether it is appropriate to use extinction or punishment, wherein those strategies are frequently interpreted in absolute terms, in relation to decreasing undesirable behaviors, and inevitably result in negative side effects. A more nuanced discussion about extinction and punishment considers the extent to which parametric applications of either might be appropriate to make a less desirable behavior less efficient than a more desirable behavior and includes the potential impact upon increasing desirable behaviors.
Matching Law, efficiency, consequences, perspectives, constructivism, variable dimensions
Psychology Research, February 2025, Vol. 15, No. 2, 37-53
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