the foundation: reinforcers & punishers

There are two classes of reinforcers & punishers: unconditioned and conditioned.

Unconditioned reinforcers & punishers are those that are innately reinforcing or punishing to us. As in, ones that do not require any learning. Some examples of unconditioned reinforcers include food, water, oxygen, and sex. Some unconditioned punishers are extreme temperatures, food (when you are full), eating, and pain.

Conditioned reinforcers & punishers are those that have been paired with other reinforcers or punishers in the past so in themselves have become reinforcing or punishing. These conditioned stimuli vary from person to person. While one stimulus can be a reinforcer for me, it may be punishing to another person. Conditioned reinforcers can be just as powerful as unconditioned ones. An example of a personal conditioned reinforcer is jewelry. An example of a personal conditioned punisher is cheese (blech).

Dog trainers use a lot of unconditioned (treats) and conditioned (clickers) reinforcers. Usually the conditioned reinforcer is paired with food and thus becomes a reinforcer. However, this in no way has to be a clicker – one could also use one’s voice or a hand motion.

More on clicker training coming up in our next training tips post!

the foundation: positive + negative punishment

Review:

• punishment – the decrease of a behavior contingent on a consequence
• positive – the presentation of a stimulus
• negative – the removal of a stimulus

It is oh-so-important to keep in mind that punishment is not necessarily an aversive, bad, painful, emotional, (insert any word normally associated with punishment), thing, although many times, it can be. (*Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that punishment procedures can be ethically challenging, and this post is just informative and is by no means a promotion or demotion of using it in the real world)

This post will basically mirror the previous foundation post for consistency and hopefully ease of understanding.

According to the definitions above, positive punishment is the presentation of a stimulus following a behavior, that causes that behavior to decrease/go away.

Example: One evening, I left the car radio on before I turned the engine off. The next morning when I started the car, the radio BLASTED music making me jump. The rush of blood to my head and being startled taught me to always turn the radio off before I turn off the engine.

This is a very common experience with painful experiences. The loud music was presented to (& scared) me (positive), so that really decreased the keeping-radio-on-when-turning-off-engine behavior in the future (punishment).

Along the same lines, negative punishment is when, after a behavior, something is removed from the environment, causing the future probability of that behavior occurring to decrease. The stimulus that is removed in negative punishment procedures is usually something that the organism finds reinforcing.

Example: You are playing tug-of-war with your dog. woohoo! it’s a lot of fun! the dog loves it, you love it. but, suddenly, fido’s teeth come a bit too close to your side of the tug toy – as in, you feel his teeth on your skin. you immediately drop your end of the tug toy, which makes the tug toy now lifeless and not-so-interesting for your dog. After a few seconds, you pick it up again and play! But next time the dog’s teeth come too close, you drop the toy and look away. In the future when you play tug-of-war with fido, fido’s teeth don’t come near you.

In this story, the tug-of-war toy (which is very reinforcing for the dog) is removed (negative) after the behavior of teeth touching skin. Furthermore, since the behavior goes away, it is punishment. This is a great way to teach your dog how to play tug-of-war nicely! Your dog will soon learn that touching teeth to skin means no more fun.

 

the foundation: reinforcement + punishment

When most people are faced with the terms reinforcement and punishment, they say that reinforcement is “good” and punishment is “bad”. In our language, this is true – reinforcement has a positive connotation, while punishment has a very negative one.

The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following “psychological” definition of reinforcement:

The action or an act of establishing or strengthening of a particular response to a stimulus or a learnt behaviour through the repetition of a rewarding or unpleasant event contingent on the response.

YES! I was so excited to see that ABA-accurate definition in there.

Unfortunately, though, the OED’s “psychological” definition for punishment is not as good as the one for reinforcement:

The infliction of an unpleasant stimulus, as pain, deprivation, etc., on an organism as a method of behavioural control, so that unwanted forms of behaviour are suppressed and the desired behaviour pattern is established.

That’s more of an everyday definition that we use.

In order to understand the basics of ABA, it is essential that you know that reinforcement means increasing the future probability of a behavior contingent on a response. punishment means decreasing the future probability of a behavior contingent on a response.

Note how the only difference is either increasing or decreasing the behavior. There is no “good”, “bad”, “right”, or “wrong” associated with either of the terms in ABA.

Let’s say you have a plant, and you water it every other day. The plant stays healthy and green (what you want). As a result, you continue to water your plant every other day. Therefore, your behavior of watering the plant every other day is reinforced by the plant’s apparent health. But, again, reinforcement is not always associated with favorable situations.

Let’s say you have a son, and you are shopping at Toys `R Us for a present for the child’s friend. Your child sees a brand new Bakugan toy and asks you to buy it for him. You say “no”. Your son then throws himself on the floor, cries, and yells “I WANT THE TOY!!!!!” repeatedly. You then groan “fine~” and buy it for him. On future shopping trips, you find that if you say “no”, your child automatically throws a tantrum. Voila! Your child’s tantrum behavior is now reinforced by you giving him what he wants.

On the flip side, you water your plant every other day. The plant starts to wilt and becomes yellow. You think that your watering schedule is affecting the plant’s health, so you stop watering the plant every other day. Therefore, your behavior of watering the plant every other day is punished by the plant’s rotting. Similar to the reinforcement examples, punishment does not always have to be associated with adverse situations.

Now that your son throws a tantrum every time he wants something in a store, you are almost at the point where you don’t want to take him anywhere. So you decide to put your foot down and you just won’t take anymore of this! The next time you are in a store, your son throws a tantrum over a candy bar. You ignore his tantrumming and take him straight out of the store. After two more events like this, you notice that your son’s tantrums are diminishing. Therefore, you have punished his behavior of tantrumming. Congratulations! See, just because you punished the behavior, doesn’t mean you were a horrible parent or inflicted pain or physical trauma to your son.

Whew! I know this is a lot, but I hope you guys are still following along!

Next post: Positive + Negative Reinforcement/Punishment