Chaining

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This article is about chaining as a training procedure. For information about chaining in expert systems, see Expert system

Chaining is an instructional procedure used in Behavioral Psychology. It involves reinforcing individual responses occurring in a sequence to form a complex behavior. It is frequently used for training behavioral sequences (or "chains") that are beyond the current repertoire of the learner.

[edit] Procedure

The chain is broken down into steps using task analysis. The learner is then taught each step individually. The chain is set in motion through the use of a stimulus, or prompt. Eventually, each step, or link, in the chain becomes the discriminative stimulus for the following link. The final step is usually associated with some sort of natural reinforcer (a stimulus that increases the probability of behavior and is a natural consequence of performing the behavior).

As the earlier steps become associated with the latter steps through classical conditioning, the steps begin to take on reinforcement value. Thus, the occurrence of a later link after an earlier link increases the probability that the organism will perform the earlier link again (which, of course, will serve as a prompt for the later link). As small chains become mastered, i.e. are performed consistently following a single discriminative stimulus, they may be used as links in larger chains. Each chain then becomes a discriminative stimulus for the following chain and a reinforcer for the previous chain. The most common forms of chaining are backward chaining, forward chaining, and total task presentation.