Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition
by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler
169 Shaping
Training a target behavior by reinforcing successive approximations of that behavior.
Complex behaviors can be difficult to teach. Shaping is a strategy whereby complex behaviors are broken down into smaller, simpler sub-behaviors and taught one by one. The sub-behaviors are reinforced with rewards (e.g., trainees are given food) and ultimately chained together to achieve the complex behavior. For example, to teach a mouse to press a lever, the mouse is first reinforced to move close to the lever; then reinforced only when it makes contact with the lever; and eventually reinforced only when it presses the lever. The bar for getting a reward is continuously raised as the behavior gets closer and closer to the target behavior.1
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