Punished Again

Punishment Outside the Laboratory

• Common examples of punishment used with children

• Positive Punishment
– extra chores
– writing an essay (on a ‘relevant' subject)
– corporal punishment usually as spanking
• Negative punishment “omission training”
– Using Time-Outs Effectively
• age appropriate time out area and amount of time
• stay with toddlers to prevent abandonment issues
• target misbehaviors such as hitting, biting, stealing
– Denial of treats
– Grounding : temporary removal of privileges
– Fining: usually by deduction from the allowance
 Punishment Outside the Laboratory

• Use of positive punishment in clinical settings

• restricted to extreme circumstances when all other forms of
treatment have failed and when the behavior to be modified is a
danger to the person or to others
• To stop self injurious behavior
– example of recurrent vomiting in nine month old infant
– Example of self-injurious behavior “head banging”
• May be the only recourse for infants or developmentally disabled
adults
 Punishment Outside the Laboratory

• Punishment in Criminal Justice System

• How effective is use of punishment in the criminal justice system?

• Socio-economical punishments
• fines or loss of income
• Demotion, suspension or expulsion
– Physical Punishments
• imprisonment and other forms of forced detention
• corporal punishment: the deliberate infliction of pain intended as correction or
punishment
• capital punishment i.e. death penalty, killing of a person as punishment
 The Effect of Praise, Positive Nonverbal Response, Reprimand,
and Negative Nonverbal Response on Child Compliance
Owen, D. J., Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev. 2012 Dec;15(4):364-85
• Relationship between child compliance and parenting discipline
– Praise
• socially rewarding comments “good job”
– Positive nonverbal responses
• cues of warmth or approval such as hugs, authentic smiles
• may include tangible reinforcers “candy”
– Reprimand
• brief, immediate, firm verbalizations meant to punish the recipient
• Harsh and critical utterances (e.g., yelling at child, insulting child) are not
reprimand
– Negative nonverbal responses
• cues of threat or disapproval such as stern looks, crossed arms, and shaking head
• Which are signals of negative emotion
• may include loss of privileges
 The Effect of Praise, Positive Nonverbal Response, Reprimand,
and Negative Nonverbal Response on Child Compliance

• Noncompliance
– failing to follow or doing the opposite of an instruction,
– Common in early childhood
– high rates of noncompliance
– developmental precursor to conduct problems
• Most parents often use praise to reward and reprimand to punish
– praise and reprimand obtain social meaning
• Which behaviors are acceptable and which are not
• Paired with naturally reinforcing or punishing consequences
– parent–child relationship quality can increase or decrease the value of praise
and reprimands for the child
– Parent training programs include instruction in the use of praise and
reprimand
 The Effect of Praise, Positive Nonverbal Response, Reprimand,
and Negative Nonverbal Response on Child Compliance

• Reprimand and negative nonverbal responses consistently resulted

in greater compliance
• Time-out is consistently found to be an effective nonverbal means
of reducing problem behavior
• Praise and positive nonverbal responses do not consistently
produce compliance
– Using only praise may not be enough to reinforce compliance.
– for some children identified as noncompliant praise may function differently
as compared with children not identified as noncompliant
 Theories of Punishment
• Conditioned Emotional Response:
– Recall from chapter three
• CS+(tone) paired with US(shock) trials to produce fear conditioning
• In an operant chamber suppression of lever pressing when the tone comes on.
– Suppression of on going behavior because of emotional response to the
aversive stimulus
– Activates defensive behavior of freezing from fear stimulus
• Which interrupts other behaviors
– When an ‘explicit’ CS is not used
• “context” cues can predict the aversive event
• Place where the aversive is encountered forms strong emotional memories
• CER can explain why response-contingent aversive stimuli produce
more suppression than non-contingent
 Theories of Punishment

• The Avoidance Theory

– Based on Two-Process theory
• Avoidance behavior related to fear established during Punishment
• Not freezing which is suppression of behavior
• Produces escape responses which replace the punished behavior
– Punished response is not weakened
• Instead, strengthening of avoidance responses that ‘compete’ with punished
response
• These eventually ‘outweigh’ punished responses and therefore control behavior
– Limitations of theory
• What are the avoidance responses that are acquired?
• Difficult to test empirically
• Escape from the aversive stimulus produces avoidance behavior.
• Learn an alternative “replacement” behavior to avoid the aversive stimulus.
 Theories of Punishment

• Negative Law of Effect

– Originated by Thorndike
• Positive reinforcement and punishment are symmetrically opposite effects
• Reinforcement strengthens and punishment weakens behavior
– Tested with concurrent schedules where one schedule is reinforced and the
other is punished
– Rasmussen (2008)
• College students on a concurrent schedule
• Clicking on two targets on a computer screen
• Initially both were reinforced by getting 4 cents
• Then a punishment contingency, loosing 4 cents, for one of the targets was added
– Punishment produced a large bias in responding
– Across a series of VI schedules
» Three times as much effect from punishment as reinforcement