with operantsâ (Donahoe & Palmer, 2004, p. 114-115). âIf the effects of punishment are primary effects, there seems to be little reason to expect that punishment ...
Punishment: Conceptual Issues BRYAN BLAIR MS, LABA, BCBA Endicott College
The Association for Behavior Analysis International Annual Conference
MICHAEL DORSEY PhD, LABA, BCBA-D Endicott College
Chicago, IL May, 2016
Agenda ● History of the term “Punishment” ● Terminological issues and inconsistencies ● Seminal studies ● Primary vs. Secondary Process ● Recommendations
Punishment - Terminological Issues Basic Principles ● Reinforcement increases future probability (rate) of behavior ● Extinction decreases future probability (rate) of behavior ● Incompatible behaviors ● Matching Law
Basic Principles Behavior Increase
Behavior Decrease
Positive Reinforcement
Extinction
Negative Reinforcement
Punishment?
Punishment - Terminological Issues What is Punishment? ● What does it mean to decrease the future probability (rate) of a behavior? ● Punishment ○
Presentation of a negative reinforcer (Type I)
○
Removal of a positive reinforcer (Type II)
● Is punishment a primary or secondary process?
Punishment - Terminological Issues Terminological Issues “Punishment, as we have seen, does not create a negative probability that responses will be made, but rather a positive probability that incompatible behavior will occur” (Skinner, 1953, p. 222). "A stimulus is known to be aversive only if its removal is reinforcing" (Skinner, 1953, p. 179). "The most important effect of punishment, then, is to establish aversive conditions which are avoided by any behavior of 'doing something else’” (Skinner, 1953, p. 189).
Punishment - Terminological Issues Terminological Issues “If a dead man can do it, it ain't behavior, and if a dead man can't do it, then it is behavior” (Malott & Suarez, 2003, p. 9). “Punishers act by causing conditioned responses to interfere with operants” (Donahoe & Palmer, 2004, p. 114-115). “If the effects of punishment are primary effects, there seems to be little reason to expect that punishment of one response would increase the efficacy of reinforcement for establishing other responses” (Spradlin, 2002, p. 475).
Punishment - Terminological Issues Definitions “Definitions of punishment tend to fall into one of two categories: those that define punishment as a direct process and those that define it as a secondary process” (Van Houten, 1983, p. 13) “An operation in which an aversive or conditioned aversive stimulus is made contingent upon a response” (Ferster and Skinner, 1957, p. 731)
Punishment - Terminological Issues Definitions “We define punishment without appealing to any behavioral effect; punishment occurs whenever an action is followed by a loss of positive or a gain of negative reinforcers. The definition says nothing about the effect of a punisher on the action that produces it” (Sidman, 2001, p. 45).
Punishment - Terminological Issues Definitions “We must first define punishment without presupposing any effect...We first define a positive reinforcer as any stimulus the presentation of which strengthens the behavior upon which it is made contingent. We define a negative reinforcer (an aversive stimulus) as any stimulus the withdrawal of which strengthens behavior” (Skinner, 1953, p. 184-5).
“The result of punishment was a temporary suppression of the behavior, not a reduction in the total number of responses. Even under severe and prolonged punishment, the rate of responding will rise when punishment has been discontinued” (Skinner, 1953, p. 184).
Estes, 1944 ● Punishment suppresses behavior ● Punishment is not a reductive process “A response which has once been strengthened by periodic reinforcement cannot be eliminated from the organism’s repertoire solely through the action of punishment...Clearly, punishment results in a suppression rather than a weakening of the response” (p. 14).
Punishment - Terminological Issues Definitions “Thorndike has revised his original formulation...when a response appears to have been weakened by punishment, it is only because the organism has been forced to learn some alternative response to the situation” (Estes, 1944, p. 1).
Secondary Process “Hence, the reduction of the punished response comes about because of the strengthening of other responses. Now, this is really only a hypothesis, and one that is probably difficult to test directly. However, I see nothing in the current article that is incompatible with Skinner’s conception” (Spradlin, 2002, p 475).
Secondary Process ● Stimulus Control ● Motivating Operations ● Extinction ● Positive vs. Negative Reinforcement ● Competing responses ● Function
Research ● Holz, Azrin, Ayllon (1963) ● Dorsey, Iwata, Ong and McSween (1980) ● Fisher et al., (1994) ● Thompson, Iwata, Conners and Roscoe (1999)
Punishment - Terminological Issues Definitions “The present definition of punishment as a primary process is that (1) no independent evidence is required that the stimulus will maintain escape behavior, and (2) the defining characteristic of punishment is directly measurable in terms of the existence of response reduction” (Azrin and Holz, 1966, p. 382). "The definitions differ only with respect to the direction of change of the response probability: an increase of probability for positive reinforcement, a decrease for punishment. Neither process is secondary to the other” (Azrin and Holz, 1966, p. 383).
Punishment - Terminological Issues Terminological Issues ● Alternate explanations of behavior reduction ○ Differential reinforcement (Stimulus Control, Extinction) ○ Avoidance / suppression (Negative Reinforcement) ○ Motivating Operations
● Parsimony ○ Do we need punishment as a term to describe the data?
Punishment - Terminological Issues Terminological Issues ● Why do we use the word “punishment”? ○ Vernacular ○ Our verbal behavior is reinforced
● Symmetry is appealing ○ Reinforcement and punishment ○ Easier to research, teach, explain, apply
● Motivating Operations are confusing ○ Stimulus-condition changes vs. presentation/removal
Competing Analyses Primary Process ● ● ● ●
Contingency reduces Current definition Azrin and Holz Supported by research ○ ○
BUT - most studies don’t track reinforced behaviors Few Functional Assessments
Secondary Process ● ● ● ●
Reduction is secondary Reinforcement/Extinction MOs Early definitions (Skinner, Sidman, Michael) ● Supported by research ○
With many open questions...
Punishment - Terminological Issues Recommendations Include When Teaching the Concept of Aversive Control 1.
A reference to a change in stimulus conditions
2.
Aversive stimulus might control responding through reinforcement contingencies
3.
Incompatible behavior might interfere with the supposed punished response, thus masking the effect of the reinforcement contingency
4.
Behavioral selection occurs along a spectrum of less ↔ more aversive/appetitive stimulus conditions
5.
Summarized experimental data ought to be presented to students and practitioners of behavior analysis
Acknowledgments Dr. Michael Dorsey
References References Azrin, N. H., & Holz, W. C. (1966). Punishment. Operant behavior: Areas of research and application, 380-447. Doughty, S. S., Anderson, C. M., Doughty, A. H., Williams, D. C., & Saunders, K. J. (2007). Discriminative Control of Punished Stereotyped Behavior in Humans. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 87(3), 325–336. Estes, W. K. (1944). An experimental study of punishment. Psychological Monographs, 57(3), i. Ferster, C. B., & Skinner, B. F. (1957). Schedules of reinforcement. Lerman, D. C., & Vorndran, C. M. (2002). On the status of knowledge for using punishment: Implications for treating behavior disorders. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 35, 431 - 464. Matson, J. L., & Taras, M. E. (1989). A 20 year review of punishment and alternative methods to treat problem behaviors in developmentally delayed persons. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 10(1), 85-104. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York, NY: The Free Press. Spradlin, J. E. (2002). Punishment a primary process?. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 35(4), 475.
