Remember that first day in grade school? Looking at the shapes and colors on paper attached to the blackboard, you learned about letters. But some were very different from what Mom had taught you. They seemed to be made of sticks and circles attached to each other. Is a “b” really a “d”, backwards?

You learned them one at a time. And, as you recognized each correctly, the teacher would smile and say, “Good!” After awhile, distinguishing one from the other alone did not elicit a “good.” Now you had to understand how they combine to make different sounds; then words. And just when you thought you had it…the teacher switched to cursive!
Recall that, “reinforcement”, refers to a consequence that increases the behavior it follows. After determining a behavior you wish to increase, selecting a suitable reinforcer, and arranging a contingency or, “if-then”, relationship between them, another thought might occur to you: How long must you reward someone for each occurrence of a desired behavior? Generally, in order to acquire a strong, desirable behavior, it is useful for a reinforcement to follow every occasion of that behavior. Once the behavior is occurring regularly, occasional or “intermittent” reinforcement is most advantageous for maintaining its consistency.
How can you get your child to clean his (her) room, or your husband to help with housework using these principles? At first, every day that a bed is made or clothes are hung properly and toys or personal articles are stored neatly make notice of this with a smile, gentle touch, enthusiastic voice; or perhaps a favorite privilege. Similarly, each time your husband loads the dishwasher, dries and stores the dishes, takes out the garbage, vacuums, or otherwise completes a requested task, offer him recognition in a variety of ways.
“But what if my son never makes his bed? And my husband– he would eat from the pot before he would think to wash a plate!”
When Skinner was evolving these principles from his work with animals, he would wait for an approximation to the desired behavior, then reinforce each occurrence until it happened with acceptable frequency. He would then require a more complex approximation of the entire response for reinforcement, and so forth until the target behavior was performed at an acceptable criterion level. This principle is known as shaping, and is applicable to human behavior in a variety of situations. Shaping is a method for refining or extending a behavior which is often complex and at first, not exhibited in its entirety. A child (or husband) performing a series of tasks– not just one or two–in order to complete a requested activity; academic learning such as reading; developing a powerful tennis serve, becoming proficient at a new job.
Shaping human behavior is facilitated more easily than animal behavior through the use of “cues.” A cue is any signal indicating what behavior will be followed by reinforcement. Cuing people is accomplished, for the most part, through language. “Rob, would you please clean your room? Begin by making your bed.” Thus, when shaping behavior:

• (a) Consider the target response.
• (b) Break it into more easily accomplished approximations of that desired final response.
• (c) Reinforce each occurrence of a given approximation until it occurs with satisfying frequency.
• (d) Then, cue the individual that a further approximation is now required for approval (think of it as inflation!).
• (e) Continue this process until the target response occurs.

The presence of language as a cue in humans facilitates the shaping process. In contrast, although animals respond to cues, they must first be taught to recognize a cue. For example, the rat that presses a bar for food only when a light is turned on, or a dog that responds to a hand signal and command, “sit!” When Skinner was teaching a pigeon to play ping- pong using a shaping procedure, he certainly couldn’t say, “Look, hold the racquet in your beak like this…no…that’s right. Now when I bounce the ball…” Instead, he had to wait for a small approximation to the target response, reinforce it, require further modification, and so forth. In both humans and animals, during shaping, each approximation becomes a cue signaling that the next step will be reinforced. Thus, a husband whose wife has demonstrated exquisite mastery of shaping knows that placing dirty dishes in the sink is but one in a series of tasks that comprise, cleaning the kitchen. After awhile, placing dishes in the sink becomes a cue indicating that performing subsequent and related tasks will lead to… his favorite reward.