Today’s newsletter will include the following:

• 💡 What’s the Difference Between Bribery and Reinforcement?

• ✂️ An Update on the Craft Section 💥 

• 🔬 Literature Review: Using Successful Strategies Instead of “Tricks or Treats”

• 📰 News: Eagles Autism Foundation contributes $6.2 million, and Mar Galcerán makes history

• 🌟 Creator Highlight: A Bribes vs Reinforcement TikTok by The Family Behaviorist

• 🎓️ Resources to learn more (and get those sweet CEUs!)

• 😆 Read to the end for the Monthly Meme!

💡 The Learning Zone: What’s the Difference Between Bribery and Reinforcement?

As defined above, a bribe is an attempt to make them do something that you want them to do. This is typically done by telling the learner, in the moment, that they will get a reward if they exhibit a behavior.

Some examples of bribery:

• The learner is told if they clean their room, they will get five dollars. This results in them cleaning their room today, but they leave the room messy next week until they are promised more money.

• The learner is told, “If you stop playing video games and do your homework, I will give you ice cream”. This results in the learner playing video games in the future, instead of completing homework, because they want to be offered ice cream again.

In ABA, we reinforce behavior to make it stronger. This is typically done by delivering something preferred to the learner after they exhibited the behavior (positive reinforcement), or by taking away something that is not preferred, after they exhibited the behavior (negative reinforcement).

Behavior can also be reinforced by making an agreement in advance that states how rewards can be earned.

Some examples of reinforcing behavior:

• Creating a written agreement that states, “If your room is clean on Friday nights, you will earn a five dollar allowance”. This results in the learner keeping their room clean so that they will be rewarded each Friday.

• Telling your learner, “I love how you completed your homework before you started playing video games today, you are awesome!”. This results in the learner completing their homework before playing video games more often, because they enjoyed receiving praise.

So what exactly is the difference?

A reward is a bribe if it is promised before or during a behavior. The bribe must be presented again to increase the chance that the behavior happens again. This may lead to a lack of internal motivation for the learner, as they rely on promised rewards to initiate tasks.

A reward is a reinforcer if it is given after a behavior occurs naturally, or when given after a behavior occurs based upon a pre-established agreement. This helps build the learners motivation to complete tasks or engage in behaviors on their own, without being told what to do.

✂️ The Craft Corner is Getting Cut!

I feel that the craft section is not providing a value to the readers equal to the effort it takes to write, so I did not create a craft for this months newsletter. In place of this months craft, I am going to introduce polls now that we are nearing 50 subscribers!

The goal of ABA Vibes is to be a community, therefore, this first poll will lean on you, the reader, to determine if the community agrees with my decision to remove the monthly craft. Results will be posted in the next newsletter!

 🔬 Literature Review: Using Successful Strategies Instead of “Tricks or Treats”

In the linked article “Children’s Noncompliance, Ineffective Parental Strategies, and Therapeutic Solutions”, researchers Carmit Matalon and Maria Nicoleta Turliuc discuss the issue of noncompliance and examine two ineffective strategies for responding to noncompliant behavior. These strategies are threats and bribes, which the researchers refer to as tricks or treats.

Treats, or bribes, occur when the learner is offered “benefits in order to convince [them] to comply due to the reinforcers that are promised (e.g., ‘If you’ll go to the shower you will get extra TV time’ or ‘If you’ll sit down and do your homework I will sit with you and help you’)” (Matalon & Turliuc, 2020, para. 3).

Tricks, or threats, occur when the learner is delivered a risk of punishment to convince them “to comply in order to avoid the aversive consequence (e.g., ‘If you don’t turn off the computer now, you will not get access to it for the next week’ or ‘If you won’t eat the salad, you will not get desert’)” (Matalon & Turliuc, 2020, para. 3).

Matalon and Turliuc (2020) explain that “the described strategies can be very effective in producing compliance” (para. 3), which increases the probability that bribery and threats will be used again in response to noncompliance. However, when using bribery, “the behavior being reinforced . . . will be the noncompliant behavior, since the reward was offered immediately after it” ( para. 3). When using threats, the “behavior that will be reinforced and learned is complying after a threat of punishment (and not to the original parental request)” (para. 3).

Matalon and Turliuc (2020) follow the examination of these strategies by offering a solution of implementing “a successful Behavioral Parent Training program based on Applied Behavior Analysis” (para. 1). This Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) program should be individualized “based on the specific knowledge gained from interviewing the parents and from direct observations of family interactions” (para. 11).

The training program should be conducted by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, and include: how to provide praise and reinforcers following desired behavior, how to avoid using “tricks and treats” and inadvertently reinforce noncompliance, and “how to define expectations from the [learner] beforehand and how to provide effective guidance in a way that will decrease the probability that the child will present non-compliance in the first place” (para. 11).

_{This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.}

📰 In the News:

🌟 Creator Highlight: The Family Behaviorist

Check out this TikTok by The Family Behaviorist about Bribes vs Reinforcement. This account is run by Mandy Grass, a parent coach, behavior analyst, and mom. Follow @thefamilybehaviorist for daily posts on a wide variety of behavior related topics!

This creator has a website offering their services and free resources linked below the TikTok!

@thefamilybehaviorist

This is a question I get asked often! There are semantic differences but ultimately it doesn’t matter. All behaviors that occur regularly ... See more

🎓️ Learn More:

🤣 Monthly Meme: