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Eliminating
Inappropriate Behaviour
• through Punishment
ELIMINATI
NG
INAPPROPR
IATE
BEHAVIOU
R
Prepared by:

THROUGH
ALANNIE D. PADRIGA
PUNISHME
NT
 THE PRINCIPLE OF PUNISHMENT

A punisher is an event that, when presented immediately following

a behaviour, causes the behaviour to decrease in frequency.

Associated with the concept of a punisher is the

PRINCIPLE of PUNISHMENT:

"If, in a given situation, somebody does something that is

immediately followed by a punisher, then that person is less
likely to do the same thing again when he or she next
encounters a similar situation.

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 TYPES OF PUNISHERS
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-Physical Punishers
-Reprimands
-Timeout
-Response Cost

Physical Punishers
includes all punishers following a behaviour that
activate pain receptors that evoke feelings of
discomfort.
It refers to aversive stimuli, aversive punishers or
simply, aversive.

Aversive Punishers
Examples
-spanking
-pinches
-electric shock
-ammonia vapor,
-cool baths
-loud or harsh sounds
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-prolonged tickling 3
-hair tugging
 REPRIMANDS
-are strong negative verbal stimuli contingent on behaviour.
-includes a fixed stare and sometimes a form grasp

CONDITIONED PUNISHER
-stimulus paired with punishment
ex:
* verbal component and fixed stare of a reprimand
-in part because of their being paired with the other component [the firm grasp]
which may be a PHYSICAL PUNISHER

Reprimands with water mist spray to suppress self-injurious behaviour in

individuals with developmental disabilities become effective.

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 TIMEOUT
involves transferring an individual from a more reinforcing to a less reinforcing
situation following a particular behaviour. It can be viewed as timeout from the
opportunity to earn reinforcers

Types of Timeouts

Exclusionary
-consists of removing the individual from the situation in which reinforcement is
occurring for a short time [5minutes]
Ex: a special room called time out room is used for this purpose

Non exclusionary
-consists of introducing into the situation a stimulus associated with less
reinforcement
Ex: timeout ribbon introduced by Foxx and Shapiro
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 Click icon to add picture

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 RESPONSE COST

involves the removal of a specified amount of reinforcer

following a particular behaviour

Examples in everyday life:

*library fines
*traffic tickets
*charges for overdrawn checking accounts

-response cost is sometimes used in behaviour modification

programs in which clients earn tokens as reinforcers
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 FACTORS INFLUENCING THE EFFECTIVNESS OF
PUNISHMENT

1.Maximizing the Conditions for a Desirable Alternative

Response

-to decrease an undesirable response, it is maximally effective to

concurrently increase some desirable alternative response.
-this means that you should identify some desirable response that
will complete with the undesirable behaviour to be eliminated.
 2. Minimizing the Cause of the Response to be Punished

-to maximize the opportunity for the desirable alternative behaviour to

occur, anyone attempting a punishment program should first minimize
the causes of the punished behaviour.

This implies 2 things

1.One should try to identify the current stimulus control of the
punished behaviour
2.One should try to identify existing reinforcers that are maintaining
the undesirable behaviour.

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 3.Selecting a Punisher

-It is important to be sure that the punisher is effective. In general,

the more intense or strong the punishing stimulus, the more
effective it will be in decreasing the undesirable behaviour

ex:
a parent may say NO, NAUGHTY BOY! STOP THAT! to a child who
is engaging in undesirable behaviour. The child may immediately
cease the undesirable behaviour and emit some other, desired
behaviours that will continue to receive the attention of the adult.
The adult might then conclude that reprimand was an effective
punisher.
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 4.Delivering the Punisher
Punishment is most effective when the punisher is presented
immediately following the undesirable behaviour..

ex:
The mother who asks her husband after he returns home from work to
punish their son, who has misbehaved earlier in the day.

-This request is doubly disastrous : Not only does the child receive the
punisher, even though he may now be engaging in good behaviour,
but the father is punished for coming home from work. We do not
mean to imply that delayed punishment is completely ineffective.

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 USING RULES
As we described for positive reinforcement and extinction, it is not
necessary that the individual be able to talk about or understand why
his or her behaviour was punished.

The person for whom the program is implemented should told

something like:

-In such and such situations, each time that the problem behaviour
occurs, the punisher will occur.
-On the other hand, each time that the desirable alternative behaviour
occurs instead, the reinforcing item will be presented
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 SHOULD PUNISHMENT BE USED?
The use of punishment has always been highly controversial, even before the
advent of behaviour modification, but the controversy intensified during the
1980s [Meyer & Evans 1989].

-A number of organizations concerned with helping people have formulated

official statements against at least some uses of punishment

Example:

The Practice Directorates of the American Psychological Association and the

National Association of School Psychologists have provided testimony to the
United States Congress in support of an amendment banning the use of
corporal punishment for emotionally disturbed children
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There are some extremely harmful behaviours that can be suppressed only with aversive
punishment

ex:
There are individuals with developmental disabilities and autism who repeatedly engage in
severe self-injurious behaviour-damaging their vision by gouging their eyes, damaging
their hearing by clapping their hands against their ears, causing tissue damage and
bleeding by banging their heads on hard objects or tearing at their flesh, becoming
malnourished by including vomiting after eating-that places them in great danger of either
disabling or killing themselves.

*A number of studies in the literature demonstrate that these behaviours can be

suppresses by aversive punishment

Because of this several authors have described methods, such as an approach called
GENTLE TEACHING[McGee, Menolascino,Hobbs&Menousek,1987], that they claim can
effectively replace all forms of aversive control.

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Even though the use of punishment is highly controversial, its is clear that
punishment can have a number of potentially harmful effects. These may be
summarized as follows:

1.Punishment tends to elicit aggressive behaviour.

-Experiments with animals show that painful stimuli cause them to attack other animals-
even though these other animals had nothing to do with inflicting the painful stimuli.

2.Punishment can produce other undesirable emotional side effects, such as crying
and general fearfulness. Not only are these side effects unpleasant for all concerned, they
frequently interfere with desirable behaviour

3. Punishment may cause the situation and people associated with the aversive
stimulus to become conditioned punishers.

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4. Punishment does not establish any new behaviour; it only suppresses old
behaviour. Punishment does not teach an individual what to do; at best, it only teaches
what not to do.

5.Children often model or imitate adults. if adults apply punishment to children, the
children are apt to so the same to other. Thus, in punishing children we may
inadvertently be providing a model for them to follow in presenting aversive stimuli toward
others[Bandura.1965.1969].

For example:
children who were taught a game in which they were fined for incorrect behaviour fined
other children to whom they taught the game

6.Because punishment results in quick suppression of undesirable behaviour, it can

tempt the user to rely heavily on it and neglect the use of positive reinforcement for
desirable behaviour.

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 PITFALLS OF PUNISHMENT

We have discussed extensively the many potential harmful side effects lying wait for those who
try to use punishment without being familiar with its properties

A common example is criticizing or ridiculing a person for inadequate behaviour.

-Criticism and ridicule are generally punishing, and they will likely suppress future instances of
that behaviour and tend to drive the individual away from the person administering them.

Another example
Suppose that a teenager helps a parent with the dishes and the parent replies . Thanks for
helping , but next time don't be so slow.

-We are sure that , based on the foregoing discussion, you can describe a much more effective
and pleasant way for the parent to react

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 GUIDELINES FOR THE EFFECTIVE APPLICATION OF
PUNISHMENT PROCEDURES
1.Selecting a response
-Punishment is most effective with a specific behaviour [such as jumping on the arm of the chair]
rather than a general category of behaviour [such as wrecking furniture]

2.Maximize the conditions for a desirable[non punished] alternative response.

a. Select a desirable alternative behaviour that competes with the behaviour to be punished such that
the alternative behaviour can be reinforced
b. Provide strong prompts to increase the likelihood that the desirable alternative behaviour will occur
c. Reinforce the desirable behaviour with a powerful reinforcer on an appropriate schedule

3.Maximize the causes of the response to be punished

a. Try to identify and eliminate many or all of the undesirable behaviour, at least early in the training
program
b. Try to eliminate any possible reinforcement for the undesirable behaviour.

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4.Select an effective punisher
a. Choose an effective punisher that can be presented immediately following the undesirable
behaviour
b. The punisher should be the one that will in no way be paired with positive reinforcement following
the undesirable behaviour
c. Select a punisher that can be presented following every instance of the undesirable behaviour

5.Apply punishment
a. Tell the individual about the plan before starting
b. present the punisher immediately following every instance of the response to be decreased
c. Administer the punisher in a calm and matter-of-fact manner
d. take care not to pair punishment of the undesirable behaviour with reinforcement for that
behaviour

6. In all programs involving punishment, careful data should be taken on the effects of the
program.
The conditions under which the program should be applied must be stated clearly, written down, and
followed

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 Thank
you!• EL
IMIN
G ATIN
INA P
ATE PROPRI
Prepared
BEHA by:
THRO VIOUR
ALANNIE
PD. UGH
UNPADRIGA
I SH M
T EN

alanniedalocanogpadriga15@gmail.com