Four Functions of Behavior (Part 1/4)
Do you ever see someone doing something odd and wonder, “why in the hell are they doing that?” Well, according to behaviorists, it’s for one of four possible reasons. In fact, ALL human behavior is possibly broken down into one of four possible reasons. An easy acronym to remember them by is “everybody EATS.” E is for escape, A is for attention, T is for tangibles, and S is for sensory. I’ll go over each on in a separate blog post so it doesn’t become too overwhelming, but I highly suggest reading all four posts.
So let’s start with the first one: Escape. Basically this means that someone is doing something because they want to escape something else. The important thing to remember is that any behavior can serve any purpose. So let’s take for example not picking up the phone when someone is calling. They are most likely wanting to avoid/escape the phone call, so they don’t answer. Pretty straight forward, right? Let’s pick something a little more tricky – how about a toddler screaming? You have to ask yourself, “why is my kid screaming?” It could be for a number of reasons. They might be hurt. They might be angry you took something. They might be upset you aren’t looking at them. But for right now, we’re talking about escape motivated behavior. For screaming, this might mean that you are wanting them to eat their veggies, and every time you bring the spoonful of veggies to their mouth, they scream. Then you drop the spoon, sigh your best exasperated sigh, and say, “I give up.”
Congratulations, you reinforced that child’s escape motivated screaming behavior to get out of eating their veggies. I’m sure your kiddo is quite proud of himself now.
Oh, wait, crap. That’s not the outcome we wanted. Your child needs to eat his veggies. What do we do??
This is why knowing the function of a behavior is important.
So now that we know that the child is screaming in hopes of escaping the dreaded veggies, you have to say to yourself “what do I want the child to do?”
Answer: eat their veggies.
How do we do that?
Well when we’re dealing with escape motivated behavior, there are a few things we need to keep in mind. As long as they keep getting out of doing whatever they are (or you are) trying to escape, they will keep doing it. So if every time your kiddo screams, you give up on the veggies, they will continue to scream because it WORKS for them. So when dealing with escape behavior you can continue pressing on until the behavior subsides (not for the faint of heart – might want to invest in some ear plugs and nice glass of wine waiting for you after the fact) and keep the demand of eating the veggies until the kiddo complies. When that happens, PRAISE THEM! “Good job eating your veggies!” You can even follow it up with a bite of their other favorite item as a reward for compliance.
Another thing you can do when escape motivated behavior is lessen the demand. So give them a smaller bite. Only make them eat 2 bites, instead of the whole serving. Simplify the request, then you can gradually build up to more as their escape behavior subsides.
Thing to note: there is this lovely phenomenon that happens when we shape behavior called an extinction burst. Basically it means the behavior increases or intensifies before it goes away. Example: if you put a dollar into a vending machine, you push the button and…. we expect our treat to come out. What happens if the treat doesn’t come out? You might push the button harder, more times, or possibly even become violent with the machine. It’s not doing what you expected it to do. You put in money, and instead of a treat popping out, nothing happened. We’re not used to this, so we have an extinction burst. Eventually we realize this machine prefers coins over bills (how annoying) but we change our behavior so we continue to get our treat. Our behavior was just modified and shaped, and we did not become violent because we’ve learned to expect this. This same thing happens when we suddenly change a response to others.
So that’s the first in my four part series on the functions of behavior. If you have any questions about escape motivated behavior, please let me know!