1. Behavior Intervention
Shaping: Teaching Children with Autism
This software is licensed under the BC Commons License.

2. Learning Objectives Define shaping
State the two behavioural principles that underpin shaping
Define successive approximation
State three rules for implementing shaping 2
2008 (C) Douglas College 2

3. Review: Can't Reinforce?
Sometimes the desired behaviour just doesn’t occur. For example, our student may simply not know his/her alphabet, making letter identification impossible.
There’s just nothing to reinforce….
What options do we have? 3

4. Shaping! Shaping Basics:
If a behaviour never occurs, then it’s not within the learner’s repertoire (e.g., skill set). 
Regardless of a students age or skill set, there will always be something he/she simply doesn’t know.
This is when we can use shaping as a way of adding behaviors to a learner’s repertoire.   
In shaping, what you as the teacher reinforce is some approximation of the target behavior.  4

5. Shaping: Good teachers need to master how to use shaping well.
Some have said that one’s effectiveness in ABA is only as good as one’s shaping skills.
It’s not something that can be taught in class.
You have to experience doing it. 5
Copyright 2007 (C) Best behavior Consulting 5

6. How You Can Master Shaping:
Get a pet cat, dog or gold fish
Practice shaping on your parents, siblings, children, boss, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse…everyone has some skill they can learn.
Read good material on shaping such as:
Any basic ABA text
Read, “Don’t Shoot the Dog!” by Karen Pryor
It’s a very short but very well written, easy to understand book 6

7. Shaping—Definition
Shaping is a behavioral procedure whereby closer approximations of the final desired behavior are reinforced while at the same time extinguishing previous approximations of the behavior.
An example of reinforcing approximations with a student would be as follows:
Goal: the student vocalizes “Cat”
First acceptable (reinforced) response: “Kuh”
Second:“Kuh-ah” … “Kuh” is no longer reinforced
Third:“Kuh-at” … “Kuh” and “Kuh-ah” are no longer reinforced
And finally “Kat” is the only reinforced response
Have students fill in the blanks first 7 7

8. Shaping: Three main steps:
Choose terminal behavior (you teaching goal)
Choose starting behavior
Choose number and type of shaping steps
Let’s go into these steps in more depth…..
Ruzzuti, D. (2010, Nov). Hand Three. Retrieved
From freedigitalphotos.net 8 8

9. Shaping & Task Analysis: Getting our steps
To get your steps the skill needs to be broken down and taught piece by piece. This is especially true for complex skills.
Many daily living skills are good examples:
Making the bed
Tying shoe laces
Brushing teeth
Making a sandwich
Having a bath or shower
You will be reinforcing approximations to each of the steps…we will explore some examples as we go. 9

10. Shaping and Reinforcement:
As each step is learned (or getting close to being learned), stop the reinforcement for that step and only reinforce the next step (also described as reinforce the next closer approximation to terminal skill).
As seen to our previous example (slide 7), what this means is that as the child improves, previously easier but less accurate responses are no longer reinforced (in other words, no longer “work” or lead to the reinforcer) 10

11. Shaping Example # 1:
If a teacher wanted to have Ryan sit in his chair for 30 minutes but he could only sit in his chair for 1 minute, she could shape-up the duration of sitting:
Target behavior: 30 minute sitting
Starting behavior: 1 minute sitting
Shaping steps: Increased sitting time 11

12. Shaping Sitting: 10 step example
1 minute of sitting = Reinforcement
1 minute 15 seconds = Reinforcement
1.5 minutes = Reinforcement
2 minutes = Reinforcement
3 minutes = Reinforcement
5 minutes = Reinforcement
7.5, 10, 15 and 20 minute increments 12

13. 10 Shaping Rules (Pryor 1999):
Raise criteria in increments small enough that the learner always has a realistic chance for reinforcement.
Train one aspect of any particular behavior at a time, don’t try to shape for two criteria simultaneously.
a. Ex: don’t aim for volume of speech AND correct articulation. This makes it harder on the student and some will even give up trying, making teaching difficult.
During shaping, put the current level of response onto a variable schedule of reinforcement before adding or raising the criteria
a. This means that as the skill gets easier, don’t always reinforce the response. This helps introduce some variety in the student’s responding that can help the teacher and student move to the next step. 13

14. 10 Shaping Rules (Pryor 1999):
When introducing a new criterion, or aspect of the behavioral skill, temporarily relax the old ones.
Stay ahead of your learner: Plan your shaping program completely so that if the learner makes sudden progress, you are aware of what to reinforce next.
Don’t change trainers in midstream; you can have several trainers per trainee but stick to one shaper per behavior. 14

15. 10 Shaping Rules (Pryor 1999):
If one shaping procedure is not evoking progress, find another; there are as many ways to get behavior as there are trainers to think them up.
Don’t interrupt a training session unnecessarily, this can confuse the student.
If behavior deteriorates, “go back to kindergarten” (e.g. move back a step or more, make it easier again)
End each session on a high note if possible, but in any case quit while you’re ahead. 15

16. Shaping Example # 2 A child was afraid of the dark.
Target behavior: Sleeping in dark.
Starting behavior: Sleeping with light on
Approximations:
Install light switch dimmer set at level 10
Dim to level 9 (almost imperceptible change)
Dim to level 8 (another almost imperceptible change)
Dim to levels 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0
Giebenhain & O’Dell, 1984 16
Copyright 2007 (C) Best behavior Consulting 16

17. Shaping Example # 3
Skinner told this story of what happened when a committee he was on brought in Eric Fromm as a guest. “All morning long he had easy explanations for everything. And after lunch it was the same thing. We were all seated at a big table, a couple of dozen of us. He was sitting across the table from me and he started in. ‘Pigeons aren’t people you know,’ he told me. ‘You have to realize that man is different.’ He went on and on. I wrote a note saying, “Watch Fromm’s left hand. I’m going to shape a chopping motion.’ I passed the note down to the chairman. I just turned toward [Fromm] and every time his hand went up, I nodded. Pretty soon he was chopping and chopping the air with his left hand as he spoke. I thought, ‘Why does he say this doesn’t work with people.”
Miller, 1997 p. 179 17
Copyright 2007 (C) Best behavior Consulting 17

18. Shaping Example #4 Mathews, Hodson, Crist, and LaRoche, 1992
Taught the parents of a two-year old boy to wear contact lenses breaking the process down into 8 steps, teaching the child to:
Accept touching face
Accept opening the eye lid
Pull open his own eye lid
Accept drops in eyes
Accept approaching the eye with a finger
Touching the eye with fingers
Accept touching the eye with soft lens
Accept lens into eye 18

19. Additional way to use shaping: Chaining:
Chaining involves teaching a skill by first breaking it down into its various subcomponents and then teaching those steps in in either a forward or a backward direction.
As you might have noticed already, chaining is VERY similar to shaping, so you will learn how to tell the two apart in another learning module. 19

20. Closing Comments
There are several empirically supported methods for teaching children with special needs and shaping is a frequently implemented one of these.
There is always more than one way to teach a skill—if at first you don’t succeed, try another way! We will learn more in other learning modules.

21. References
Pryor, K. (1984) Don’t Shoot the Dog. Bantam Books.

22. Resource
Douglas College created this resource for the Cass behavior Intervention Provincial Partnership, funded through the Douglas College Strategic Development Fund.
Author(s)
Elizabeth Athens, Ph.D., BCBA-D & Bruce Hamm, MA, BCBA
Institution(s)
Douglas College
Title
Shaping: Teaching Children with Autism
Description
Students learn how to implement a common teaching method called shaping. They will become familiar with the steps of shaping and when to implement shaping procedures to teach a skill.
Date Created
6/29/11
Education Level
College, Post Secondary
Key Words / Tags
shaping, task analysis, ABA
License
BCCommons v. 2.0
Format
PowerPoint