Saturday 5 January 2013

Positive punishment, negative punishment, and extinction

     So we have already explored the concepts of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, so now we move onto positive punishment and negative punishment.
      If you have already read the previous post, then I would imagine that you can work out for yourself what positive punishment and negative punishment involve.
     Just as before, positive refers to the addition of a stimuli to the environment, and negative means the removal of a stimuli from an environment. However, within punishment, we are looking to decrease the frequency of a behaviour occurring. 
      An example of a positive punishment would be a teacher shouting at her pupil for writing on the desk, and he now does not do this behaviour any more. Again, there is a stimulus being added that would not have been there if the behaviour of writing on the desks had not occurred (the teacher shouting), and a decrease in the behaviour being performed in the future.
     Negative punishment, on the other hand, would involve something like, a child having their games console removed, due to being augmentative, and then leaving the behaviour performing at a lower frequency than before. A stimulus is being taken away (the games console) and the behaviour (arguing) is decreasing.
     There are some instances in the environment when punishment will be more likely too occur than others. A discriminative stimulus of a punisher can be categorised as a environmental stimuli that signals the availability of punishment when certain behaviours are performed. For example, smoking in a non-smoking area is more likely going to lead to punishment than smoking somewhere that is not a designated non-smoking area. For those of who who drive, how many of you frequently speed the entire journey, but slow down when a speed camera appears?
     Just like reinforcement, punishment has unconditioned and conditioned punishers. Unconditioned punishers can include, pain, strong smells, physical restraint, and so on. Conditioned punishers can include things such as being shouted at, being nagged, and so on. Be aware that not all conditioned punishers are the same for every animal or human. How many of you have a cat or dog that is absolutely terrified of the vacuum cleaner? Even amongst humans, punishers, as well as reinforcers are not the same for everyone. Having a child could be the most reinforcing, or most punishing thing a person has ever done. On the topic of children, we need to note that each stimuli may not be solely reinforcing or punishing all of the time. Take alcohol for example, reinforcing when we drink it, punishing the morning after.
   
     Extinction belongs in this post, as the whole point of punishment is to reduce the frequency of a behaviour. However, in some cases (like self harm), just a reduction in the behaviour is not suitable, and needs to be eradicated. The basic definition of extinction is that a behaviour that was previously reinforced, is not no longer reinforced, and therefore does not occur in the future. When setting up extinction procedures, it is important to reinforce an alternative or conflicting behaviour to that of the problem behaviour. For example, a child who picks at its skin maybe given a soft brush to use on themselves, and this behaviour now is reinforced.
     However, when using extinction, you have to be wary of some of the very serious side effects that this can cause. For example, an individuals' behaviour that you have put on extinction may display an extinction burst. This means that the frequency of the behaviour that you were not not reinforcing has sky rocketed, due to the individual doing everything they can to get the reinforcement. An extinction burst may also see new topographies (how the behaviour looks). Take for example, when the remote for the television has stopped working. You push the button, and nothing happens. You may push the button harder, or faster, or more times, or may bang the remote on the table, just to get the reinforcement you are used to. This is an extinction burst.
     Spontaneous recovery is also likely to happen in behaviours put onto extinction. This is when the behaviour frequency does initially drop due to no reinforcement given, but then suddenly climbs back up in frequency, almost like the individual is' trying their luck' at receiving reinforcement. An example of this would be a child asking for a new toy, and not getting any reinforcement by receiving the toy, and stop asking. They then may start asking again for a different toy a few days later.

In a nutshell, punishment and extinction is used to decrease the frequency of behaviour, but can have some serious side effects if not done in an appropriate manner.

If you have any questions, or are unsure about anything, please let me know.

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