Is a follow up stimuli used to reduce the strength of the performance of undesired behaviours.
Positive Punishment
Known as presentation punishment.
Occurs when a negative outcome is applied in response to a behaviour that is not desired.
Applied to reduce a behaviour and it must be connected to the behaviour to make it effective
Example :
Samuel is scared of talking in public so he avoids meetings where he has to do presentations so he decides that for every presentation he avoids, he will do two hours of paper work. The additional paperwork is a positive punishment for skipping the presentation.
A teacher makes a child do extra homework when they disrupt the rest of the class
A mother canes her child when her child misbehaves
Reflection..
Have you ever heard of the phrase "hard love"? Think back about a time when your parents/teachers punished you for misbehaving. It is hurts them as well when they punish you, but they felt that it was the most effective way to correct a display of undesired behaviour.
Known as penalty or punishment by contingent withdrawal.
It is the removal of desirable stimuli in an effort to stop undesireable behaviour.
Unlike negative reinforcement which is the removal of undesireable stimuli, removal punishment is the removal of desireable stimuli
There are a few methods in decreasing undesireable behaviours such as extinction, and some from removal punishment: Time-out and Responce cost
Example :
The deduction of the salary from an employee following an undesired behaviour, in hope that it would result in a decrease in that behaviour. Like in the comic, the manager is unhappy that his staff has been watching TV while on the job, which resulted in him deducting her salary
Bob's dad takes away his play station when Bob did not complete his homework, when he was instead playing play station all night.
Monica's mom grounded her for a month because she came home late from a party.
Think about it!
What are some of the forms of removal punishment that you have observed in your everyday life. Also, do you think they are effective methods to thwart undesired behaviour? (See also Ineffective forms of punishment)
Time out is removing the person from his favorable setting and physically isolating them from others after an undesirable behavior presented. It is effective when the undesirable behavior is motivated by others’ attention.
Example :
In school setting, it invovlves removing a student from the class and physically isolating them from their classmates.
It is one of the most misused operant conditioning strategies. it actually works as a reinforcer of undesirable behavior.
Example: Isolating a child from a class will be reinforcement when the child does not like to attend the class.
Guidelines for using time-out effectively (Betz,1994):
Explain cleary to the person the reason for time-out.
Make sure the person is not trying to avoid a more unpleasant situation.
.Make sure time –out punishing rather than rewarding.
The time-out should be humane and safe especially for young children.
Try to limit the amount of time-out especially for young children.
Think about it!
Can you identify some other ways time-out is reflected around you?
Responce cost is about the removal of already acquired and existing tangible reinforcers and priviledges to decrease an undesired behaviour.
Examples:
In home setting, taking away a child’s television time which the child enjoys after a bad behavior has taken place.
In the workplace, a company that uses a token economy system for employee rating can deduct the marks or tokens following by an undesirable behavior of their employee.
If a teacher is implementing a token economy system, a teacher could deduct tokens as a form of punishment.
Engage yourself!
Have you ever had priviledges taken away from you? Why? Think about the reason. How does it relate to responce cost?
Extinction is the gradual disappearance of a learned responce.
Using this technique, it can help in stopping inadvertent reinforcement of undesirable behavior.
In sum, it is when a behavior that had previously been reinforced have its reinforcers gradually taken away so that its consequences (the behaviour) can be removed.
It is also similar to a technique called fading, which intends the opposite.
Examples: A step by step process
With children: Instead of gratifying a child buy buying him a toy when he/she starts crying, one can choose to ignore the child's request.
How does this help? Under common circumstances, a child is gratified with the reward of the requested item everytime he/she cries or throws a tantrum.
This crying or tantrum throwing is rewarded, and the child learns that by doing so, he/she will be able to get what he/she wants.
By means of extinction, the parent chooses to ignore this child's outburst so that the behaviour is not reinforced
Therefore, the child learns that his/her tantrum throwing will not get him the reward and looks for other means to do so.
Thus, the undesired behaviour is reduced.
Have you ever..
..Forgiven someone for what they did to you? Think of its reasons, and how extinction may be involved.
Conditions under which positive punishment works :
A recap: To be effective, the punishment must occur each and every time the unwanted behavior occurs. If it is delayed, it does not serve its purpose.
Timing has to be right. It has to correspond exactly with the behavior.
It must be strong enough or most appropriate for it to be effective and reduce the behavior. If the person feels that the punishment was inappropriate or unjustified or that the punishment is extremely unfair, punishment will not work. This may be so in accordance to the age of the person who is receiving punishment
Ineffective ways of punishment
Physical punishment (corporal punishment)
Will not effectively decrease the undesirable behavior, instead it may create strong negative emotion that leads to an avoidance towards the punisher and the person may learn smarter ways to avoid getting caught . It also increases the possibility to model other such aggressive acts and the demonstration of similar behavior in the future.
Psychological Punishment
May cause embarrassing or humiliating situations to the targeted person. With which may lead to the same negative effect as corporal punishment, as well as actions such as yelling and screaming which are not effective, and presents out-of-control models to handle stress
Extra work
Associating work with negative feeling. There are possibilities that this negative feeling will be generalized to other kinds of work.
Application
Can you name other forms of ineffective punishment? Why are they ineffective? Tell a friend!
