Question

Nicolas has autistic disorder and is mute. A therapist working with Nicolas initially gave him a piece of chocolate any time he made a sound with his lips. This slowly changed until Nicolas only received a piece of chocolate for saying complete words, and eventually only for saying complete sentences. In this example, Nicolas developed speech skills through the use of _________.

Answer 1

Shaping

Step-by-step explanation:

In psychology, shaping refers to the process of reinforcing successively closer and closer approximations to a desired terminal behavior.

Shaping has different stages:

1. Reinforce any response that in some way resembles the desired behavior.
2. Reinforce the response that closely approximates the desired behavior
3. Reinforce the response that resembles the terminal behavior even more closely.
4. Continue reinforcing closer and closer approximations to the terminal behavior
5. Reinforce only the terminal behavior.

As you can see shaping starts by reinforcing any response that resembles the desired terminal behavior and then it finishes by reinforcing only the terminal behavior.

In this example, the therapist initially gave him a piece of chocolate any time he made a sound with his lips. Then he only received a piece of chocolate for saying complete words. Finally, he would get the chocolate for saying complete sentences.

Thus, this is an example of shaping, since the reinforcements where changing as the behavior got closer and closer to the terminal desired behavior.