Episode 322 Susan Friedman Pt 2- Variablity And Assent

We’re talking with Dr. Susan Friedman about schedules Susan is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University. She is well known around the world for her very popular on-line course: “How Behavior Works: Living & Learning With Animals”. She has co-authored chapters on behavior change in five veterinary texts, and her popular articles have been translated into 17 languages. She shares many of those articles on her web site: behavior works.org. It’s a great resource for all of us who want to learn more about the natural science of behavior. Susan is a member of the clicker expo faculty. Her presentations at the March Clicker Expo prompted this conversation on schedules of reinforcement. In Part 1 Susan reviewed with us the basics of fixed and variable schedules. In Part 2 we take a deeper dive into continuous reinforcement schedules. We consider how you get behavior to vary without using a variable reinforcement schedule. Susan talks about a move away from transactional training to training with assent. She explains what that means and what it might look like for the learner. We ended Part 1 with a question about how you get behavior to vary when you are using a continuous reinforcement schedule. That’s where we pick up as we continue the conversation.