Punishment

Punishment has been receiving a lot of air time lately in news, radio, hearings, etc. A quick discussion of what it is, the types of punishment, and side effects of punishment is warranted. To clarify, this is a description of punishment, not an advocacy of the use of punishment procedures.

A punisher is something that, when presented immediately following a behavior, it will cause the behavior to decrease in frequency (Martin & Pear, 2007).

We have Positive Punishment and Negative Punishment. (Just like we have positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement).

Positive Punishment: Adding something to the environment in order to decrease the probability of the behavior occurring in the future. So anything that is added to the environment when you want to decrease the behavior. This can range from a dirty look, a slap, extra homework, electric shock.

Negative Punishment: Taking away something from the environment in order to decrease the probability of the behavior occurring in the future. So if you take something away, because you want to stop a behavior from occurring, that is negative punishment. This can range from a loss of recess time, losing a favorite toy, taking a token off the board, losing attention from a teacher, etc.

Types of Punishment: Pain-inducing (un-pleasant stimuli), reprimands, time-out, response cost.

Side effects of Punishment:

1. Aggressive behavior: Punishment tends to elicit aggressive behavior. If an individual has been exposed to punishment, there is a higher probability that they will engage in punishing behavior (Berkowitz, 1989). For example, if you hit a child for running into the street, this is a new behavior that they are exposed to, and may learn to use it when they are frustrated.

2. Emotional behavior: Crying and fearfulness are common responses to punishment. This may/will pair the person delivering the punishment as negative. The child/adult may associate that person and that activity with punishment and this may damage any rapport.

3. Escape/avoidance behavior: Because the person delivering the punishment may have been associated adversely, the individual that has been punished may want to escape/avoid the punisher. This is not conducive to a learning environment.

4. No New Behavior: When you punish, you are not teaching a new more appropriate behavior to take the place of the behavior that you want to decrease. Hitting a child when they engage in self-injurious behavior, does not teach anything. All it does teach, is at best, not to engage in the behavior in front of the punisher.

Take the example of speeding. I have received many speeding tickets (punishers) but I continue to speed. However, I slow down at the spots where I have received the speeding tickets. I have learned not to speed there, but I haven't stopped speeding altogether.

5. Modeling punishment: You are modeling an inappropriate method of communication "I don't like what you did." That may and probably will get picked up by the student.

6. Continued use of punishment: You need to keep using it for it to be effective, and usually need to apply more of it. Just like children and adults satiate on reinforcement, they will satiate on punishment. Usually more punishment will be required to maintain the suppression. You may hit someone once, and it may work for a little while, but after a while it may not be enough. This may spiral into an out-of-control cycle.

Should you use punishment?

This isn't even a question I want to try to tackle here. However, looking at the facts, if an individual is engaging in an interfering or problematic behavior, there is a reason for it. Punishing the behavior does not help, teach, or show dignity and respect for the individual exhibiting the behavior. If a child is hitting his head on the table, punishing the behavior does not help us find out "WHY" the behavior is occurring. And without knowing why, we can't teach him how to use an appropriate behavior to replace the head-hitting.

There must be another way. Skinner has been quoted saying "Punishment is the tool of a weak teacher." There must be another way to teach an individual to engage in an appropriate behavior. Please see the post on positive behavior supports.

Real-life Application:

I had an experience with a response cost system with a child on the autism spectrum and self-stimulatory behavior. Response cost is when something is removed contingent upon the inappropriate behavior.

About four years ago, I worked with a child that was engaging in high rates (200 in a 2 hour session) of self-stimulatory non-contextual vocalizations. We (the team with his mom) were not able to redirect the behavior and were not able to identify competing reinforcers. (Knowing what I know now, I think I would have tried harder, but this was a learning experience.) The behavior was interfering with his learning, ability to make friends, and have a conversation with his family. Additionally, rates of self-stimulatory behavior were increasing.

We identified that the behavior appeared to function for escape, so we included several supports to make the environment one that he would not want to escape from (fun activities, lessons, dense schedule of reinforcement, more choices in his activities) but did not see a significant decrease in his self-stimulatory behavior. Additionally, he was engaging in high rates of behavior when not in demand environments.

The team, mom included, decided to implement a response cost system to help him manage his behavior. He was given a token board with fifty tokens on it. It was explained to him, that each time he engaged in the self-stimulatory target behavior, he would lose a token. If he had even ONE token left at the end of the day, he would be given half an hour of his video that was the target of his self stimulation verbalization. At the end of the day, he engaged in FIVE, compared to over 200. Significant decrease.

We faded the system out over the next couple of weeks, giving him reinforcement every two days, then every three days, then finally down to once a week. Very successful right?

Well...

We had a couple of side effects. For at least a year after the plan, the words associated with the perseveration elicited anxiety related behaviors: First, body tightening up, if he saw the words written down, he would scribble them out angrily, scribbling holes in the paper. Some anxiety-related side effects. Not terrible side effects, and it did eradicate the target behavior, but in retrospect, with more experience, I would have thought about it a little more before jumping into the response cost. I don't think I would have done it differently, but prior to the implementation, I hadn't considered possible side effects of a response cost.