PSYC2015 Lecture 6

Reducing Unwanted Behaviours.

• Positive punishment involves adding an aversive stimulus to decrease a behavior.
• Negative punishment involves removing a pleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior.
• When deciding if punishment is necessary, one must question whether the discipline is in fact necessary.
• It is important to determine if punishment is safe and how to use it effectively.

Is Punishment Effective?

• Yerkes-Dodson Law explains the relation between arousal and performance.
• Immediacy, consistency, contingency and intensity all determine the effectiveness of punishment.
• The availability of alternate behaviors available also impacts punishment effectiveness.

Reinforcement and Punishment

• Positive reinforcement means giving something good when a response increases.
• Give something bad; response decreases, results in positive punishment.
• Negative reinforcement means removing something bad, the response increases.
• Negative punishment means removing something good, resulting in a response decrease.

Contiguity, Contingency, and Stimulus Control

• Rapid is more effective than delayed punishment.
• Partial punishment is less effective than consistent punishment.
• Placing punishment under the control of a discriminative stimulus enables the stimulus to reduce response rates.

Intensity & Path-Dependency

• Starting with a weak punishing stimulus and moving to a stronger one causes weak punishment.
• Path-Dependency requires more severe punishments to have the same effect.
• Path-Dependency effectively shapes tolerance to the punishment.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

• This law states that moderate levels of stress improves performance and learning.
• Too little arousal leads to a lack of motivation.
• Too much arousal impairs performance due to anxiety, fear, or avoidance.
• It explains that when the electric shock from the experiment was mild to moderate, the mice learned the task quickly and performed well.
• It explains that when the shock was too intense, the mice became overly stressed, and their learning performance declined.

Reverse Premack Principle

• When an individual must do a less preferred activity after doing a highly preferred one, the preference for the preferred activity will decrease.

Is Punishment Safe?

• Major negative effects from punishment include the suppression of all behavior, increased anxiety, and aggression.
• Fear and pain incite aggression.
• Children who receive corporal punishment tend to use aggression to solve conflicts in life, which is modeling of violence. Gershoff, 2002.
• Avoidance of the punishing agent is also a negative effect due to fear.
• Another is Indiscriminate punishment.

Learned Helplessness

• Learned helplessness occurs when ∆P = 0.
• Cognitive and Motivational impairments are features of the LH effect.
• Emotional impairment and depressive state are all consequences of learned helplessness.
• If one experience non-contingency, such interference with learning can spread to all other learning opportunities.
• Those with a perceived absence of control over outcomes, that is transituational, are more likely to carry results from one domain to another.
• Prior experience with control reduces the impact of loss of control; inoculation.

Time Out (Negative Punishment)

• An Emotional distress and anxiety.
• Effects on attachment can be concerns with this punishment.
• It stops behavior but does not teach desirable behavior
• It can be reinforcing since it avoids a task or time alone.
• It models ostracism and exclusion as punishment towards peers.
• More effective time outs are safe and effective.
• They redirect the person to an alternative behavior.
• Ensure it rewards that behavior.
• Make time-outs brief; this is particular important for young children.
• You must monitor the punishment, explain the reason, and contingency.
• Ensure the punishment is not reinforcing and reconnect afterwards.
• "Time-in" needs to be rich.