Feature Article

Building a Bridge To Better Behavior

Building a Bridge to Better Behavior

In the 1970s, a psychologist by the name of Dr. Israel Goldiamond developed a simple behavioral program for addressing behavior change.  He lost the use of his legs in a car wreck and during his long recovery period began to apply the principles of behavior analysis to his own progress.  He broke things down into basic components.  When he needed to get from his bed into his wheelchair, instead of saying, “Damn, these useless legs!” he began developing a protocol that would get the job done.  Instead of just focusing on the predicament he found himself in, he defined his current state, identified where he wanted to be, built a bridge between the two places, and set in place a maintenance program to keep his new place in good shape.  He called it the  constructional approach. 

One of the most useful things about this program is its universality.  You can use this same system to teach new behaviors or to change an undesirable behavior to a desirable behavior.  You can teach Fido to sit on cue even though he normally only sits when he feels like it.  Or you can teach Fido to stop jumping on everyone and start sitting at their feet.  You can teach Eddie to read even though he doesn’t even know the alphabet right now, or you can teach Eddie to stop running around the classroom and start paying attention to the teacher. 

Many behavior change programs take the pathological approach.  This means the organism has something fundamentally wrong that needs to be fixed before behavior can change.   Others take the developmental approach.  This means that they compare the behavior of one organism with the behavior of his peers in the same stage of development.  The learners who fall outside the norm are a problem to be addressed. 

The constructional approach starts from where the organism is right now, determines where the organism needs to end up, creates a behavior change program (usually shaping) to get from here to there, and sets up a reinforcement program to keep the new behavior strong.  There are four fundamental questions to ask:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to end up?
3. How will we get there?  (What’s involved in building the bridge?)
4. How will we stay there once we get there?  (What’s our behavior maintenance program?)

The constructional approach doesn’t deny that perhaps part of the program will involve correcting pathologies.  If you have a bulldog who has become aggressive, and it turns out he has a thyroid imbalance, it may turn out that fixing the thyroid problem is all you need to do.  But we don’t worry as much about developmental stages as professional in other fields because of that first question.  Where are we now?  It doesn’t matter where our learner’s peers are.  It matters where SHE is.  At the beginning of every constructional approach program we figure out where the learner is right now.  We don’t worry so much about whether he’s in line with his peers, with fellow students, with other dogs from his litter right now.  We start where he or she is now.  Sometimes where a learner “should” be has nothing to do with where he or she is, and the only place we can have any effect on is where he is. 

We might want to consider developmental stages when determining the answer to question 2.  Where do we want to end up?  If the answer is a developmental stage that is a reasonable place for that learner to end up, that’s great.  But sometimes it’s best to just go where that individual needs to go and forget where he’s “supposed” to be.  That’s a decision to make based on individual needs and capacities.  It’s more important to provide your learner with behavior that will help him succeed in his own circumstances than to try to make him match up with subjective norms.

Now, these questions have to be asked in terms of the big picture as well as in terms of the little picture.  What the heck does that mean?