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  © 2008
  University of Idaho
  All rights reserved.
  Psychology Dept.
  University of Idaho
  Design - P&D  CTI

As we can see, there’s a wide variety of different types.  There are social reprimands, response cost techniques, group contingencies and there are many others.  I’ve only listed these because they are the ones that are most commonly used. So let’s begin with a discussion of social reprimands first.

As we can see in slide three, social reprimands are expressions of disapproval.  However, it doesn’t necessarily include body language or intensity.  Now, social reprimands are often given is in school settings and are problems for teachers.  Basically, we usually give more social reprimands than we give reinforcers. 

To drive home this point, I’d like to talk about a study by White.   White examined students in grades one through twelve.  What she found was after grade two, in every class, reprimands excluded praise.  That is, reprimands were significantly given more than praise.  In addition, teachers gave at least one reprimand every two minutes and often gave more reprimands to students in low ability classes than in high ability classes.  So, as you can see, reprimands were given out in much greater rate than some kind of reinforcing variable.

Now, as we can see in slide five, there are a variety of factors that influence reprimands. I’m going to talk about each of these and walk through them so we understand how to a social reprimand correctly. 

The first thing about a social reprimand is that it can include both verbal and non-verbal behavior.  Verbal content can have an effect, but using eye contact or grasping the arm or shoulder markedly increases the effectiveness.  Again, this depends on the age and the setting of the person, whether it’s school or whether at home.  You don’t need to yell when you’re using a social reprimand, you can use your normal voice, although raising your voice can have an effect.  We will talk about that a little bit later.

And as we can see on slide seven, studies looking at verbal versus and non-verbal effects are very interesting.  If one uses a verbal reprimand alone, it usually takes about four to seven times for a behavior to change.  On the other hand, verbal plus non-verbal techniques; touching the arm, eye contact, etc., only takes about one or two times for behavioral change.  So, as we can see, one wants to use both a verbal technique and a non-verbal technique to increase behavioral change.

The next aspect within verbal situation refers to the verbal content.  This is shown in slide eight.  That is, when you’re using a verbal reprimand, you must specifically define the target behavior.  On the slide are three examples with differences between the three.  “Johnny or Susie stop that.”  This is not a very good reprimand because it really doesn’t tell what “that” is.  The second example, “Johnny or Susie stop talking.”  This is a much better example because it specifically refers to the target behavior you’re wanting to change.  Finally, “Johnny or Susie, stop talking and work on your math.”  This is a much better example because it tells what behavior you want the change and it provides an alternative behavior for the two individuals.  So in essence, when you’re using some kind of verbal contact,  define what behavior you want changed.  That is , “stop talking,” and provide some alternative behavior that you want them to do.  If you want to use the ideal, you would say, “Johnny or Susie stop talking and work on your math.  When you’re done, I will give you a chocolate chip cookie.”  You could also use a star or whatever.  This would be ideal because you’re including a reinforcer after the new behavior is implemented.

Another variable related to social reprimand ishown on slide nine, relates to the proximity of when you are giving the reprimand.  Generally, the closer you are to the person that you’re giving the reprimand to, the greater the decrease in behavior.  If you’re one yard or one foot in front of the person versus ten yards away from the person, the effectiveness of the reprimand changes dramatically. 

The next variable, as we see in slide 10 relates to the immediacy of the reprimand.  This goes back to some earlier materials that we talked about with punishment.  In essence, the faster the reprimand is given following a response, the greater the response suppression.  The problem is, though, if you are reprimanding everyone all the time, especially in a classroom, what happens?  The organism starts ignoring the reprimands.  In essence, they go on extinction.  So when you are having a teacher who’s giving a reprimand every two minutes within the classroom, what begins to happen over time?  What you see is that the students stop paying attention to the reprimand, and out of control behavior in the classroom significantly increases.

The next variable related to social reprimand is the intensity of the reprimand.  The more intense the reprimand, that is loudness, the more effective the suppression.  However, you need to remember that reprimands don’t necessarily need to be loud to be effective.  Again, combined with other things such as eye contact, grasping of the shoulder, being in close proximity, being very clear about what you want to change can be just as effective as being loud.

The next aspect of social reprimands relates to the firmness of voice.  Using a firm tone or something such as “I mean business,” “look out if you don’t change your behavior” tone, is significantly better than “Well if you just kind of do this,” “Don’t do that any more,” tone.  As a result, the person just basically ignores you.  So firmness of voice is extremely important within a reprimand situation. 

Finally, another variable that we need to examine is what we call backup punishers.  These are shown in slide 13.  When paired with backup punishers, reprimands can be extremely effective.  So, having a time out that’s used when the reprimand does not occur, or does not work, significantly increases the effectiveness of later reprimands. 

Finally, as we see here on slide 14, praise for alternative behaviors.  We mentioned this a little bit before.  When you praise alternative behaviors, that is, reinforcing alternative behaviors, reprimands become more effective.  If you do that with your own child, you can oftentimes see major changes in behavior.

So that’s the review of social reprimands.  Now there are other applications of punishing procedures.  The next section that I want to talk about are called response cost techniques.  Response cost techniques, as we see in slide 15, are procedures where positive reinforcers are removed contingent upon the occurrence of a specific behavior.  Ultimately a response cost technique results in the decrease in the future probability of some behavior.  Generally what it does is remove something positive based on the occurrence of an undesirable behavior.

Now there are a variety of different variations for response cost techniques.  The classic one often used in clinical settings is where we give points at the beginning of the day and the points are removed based on the occurrence of some undesirable behavior.  Now, the points in this situation are often money; but it can also work in grade school settings as well.  So what we do is we give the therapist some money (500 or 1000 dollars) and the money is then given to a group the client hates for the non-occurrence of a behavior,  when they didn’t show up for their meeting, their data wasn’t filled out correctly, or they failed to meet some target goal. 

The same thing can occur within a grade school setting.  Here you give a bunch of points at the beginning of the day and remove points from the child or a group of children based on some kind of undesirable behavior, such as acting out.

Now the second aspect of response cost techniques relates to what we call token economies and shown in slide 17.  Here we remove tokens for some kind of inappropriate behavior.  That is, the response cost of taking the token away becomes the variable.  Of course, when tokens are taken away intense protests can occur from the person.

The next technique for using response cost relates to what we call group contingencies. In this example (shown on slide 18), we divide people into small groups and give them points for inappropriate behavior.  The group with the fewest points at the end of the day gets some kind of particular privilege.  So again, a different type of technique using response costs, but again it can be very effective, especially within school settings.

Now there’s a variety of different problems that are associated with response cost and some of these are listed beginning on slide 19.  The first problem relates to if an organism can escape.  If an organism can escape from the response cost procedure, then the response will not be effective.  For example, if you can get out of a fine, then the punishment technique will not work.  Second, In token economies, a large increase of response cost procedures can decrease it’s effectiveness.  It can decrease the actual token economy.  So one has to be very careful with how one implements this.

The third problem relates to the magnitude of response cost.  Low magnitude response cost procedures are very ineffective if preceded by a high magnitude of response cost.  So if you get a major fine, and then you get a little fine following it, the little fine isn’t going to have any kind of an effect.

The next problem with response cost is also shown on slide 20.  Sometimes there’s an increase in inappropriate behaviors.  That is, people refuse to pay the fines and accumulate large debts.  The classic one there relates to parking tickets in a major city.  People go in, they get lots and lots of parking tickets but never pay the fine.  So, ultimately what you need is have some kind of backup reinforcer or backup punisher.  That is, the city will say come in and pay your debts and we’ll only charge you half for a punishing technique, or they put a boot lock on your car, or finally, they tow it away.

The final problem relates to the effectiveness of the response cost technique if the person is using a token economy and runs out of tokens or money.  In this case, what you need to do is use some other procedure such as time out or other punishment technique.

So we’ve now talked about a few problems with response cost, what are some advantages of response cost techniques.  The first advantage, as we see in slide 21, is that it is extremely effective in many settings.  Number two, it’s also essentially neutral and usually response cost techniques don’t trigger large protests by special interest groups.            Number three, it does not cause physical harm, so that is, you don’t actually hurt the person.  Number four, when used in the token economy setting, it necessitates very few changes.  It also does not take a person out of an on-going situation like time out techniques do. 

However, there are a couple major points to note for response cost.  These are shown in slide 22.  Response cost techniques can be extremely effective if used correctly.  However, when they are used in a treatment setting or in an institutional setting of some sort, they can become overly punitive when overused by the staff.  This technique can destroy a treatment program if done incorrectly.  So, when using response cost techniques, one has to be very careful to implement them and use them correctly.

The last major type of punishment technique that is often used is called time out .  So let’s begin by looking at slide 23.  As we can see, there are three major types of time out.  There is isolation time out, exclusion time out, and non-exclusion time out.  Plus, there are a variety of different techniques within each of these.  Time out is an extremely important technique to be used and used correctly.  Unfortunately, it is often used incorrectly by both teachers and by parents, so I want to cover this procedure in some depth.

As we see in slide 24, in isolation time out, the organism is isolated from the source of the reinforcement.  That is, you basically put the person in another room. However, you need to know that isolation time out does not equal seclusion or solitary confinement (such as taking the kid out of the classroom and sticking them in a dark closet where there’s no lights).  What happens in this situation is the kid has a very emotional response of fear.  Nothing is then learned.  It also places you in a situation for a lawsuit if you’re in a teaching setting.  Thus, isolation does not equal seclusion or solitary confinement.

In isolation timeout, you’re putting the person in another room that is away from the reinforcement that was being received.  Now isolation time out is a little bit different from exclusion time out and is shown in slide 25.  Here the person is isolated but not removed from the area of reinforcement.  The classic example is having a screen put in a classroom where kids are placed behind the screen and separated from their peers but are still observed and can see the teacher.  A second technique is that one can put the child in the corner or draw a circle in the middle of the blackboard and have the child put the nose in it.  Here the child is excluded from the peers or activity but remains in the class.  Although it is more traumatic to put a child in the corner or put their nose on the blackboard, it can be very effective.  However, that when the child is doing that, of course, there is no learning occurring.

The third major type of time out relates to non-exclusion techniques and is shown in slide 26.  Here the participation in an activity is lessened but not eliminated.  The classic example is called contingent observation.  That is, the person sits on the periphery of the activity and observes appropriate social behavior before rejoining the group.  So the child is acting out in the group with their peers.  They are taken, put over on the side of the room, havethem sit in the chair, where they watch things.  After a period of time, they are returned back to the group.  In essence what this does is combines time out with a modeling for observational learning technique.

There’s some points to note about time out and shown on slide 27.  First of all, time out is not an extinction process.  That is, where we don’t do anything.  Time out is a punishment process where the kid is basically removed from the situation that has been reinforcing.  The key with time out is to place the child or the individual in a less-reinforcing environment.  Relatedly, there must be a distinct difference between the time in and time out situations.  So, when you’re doing using time out, you need to find a place where there are less reinforcers.  If there is not less reinforcement, then the time out will not be effective.  Thus, placing the child on a step, on their bed, or even in the bathroom sitting on the toilet seat is a very effective and effective places. 

Further, the removal of reinforcement within a time out situation, is aversive for every individual across all contexts is not an accurate statement.  One person’s punishment may be another person’s reinforcement.  So, when you take the kid out of a situation where they are acting out or whatever, they may actually like that because they were being picked on.  So again, removal of reinforcement is aversive for every individual is not necessarily the truth.

Now there are some important parameters for time out and shown on slide 28.  The first thing, giving long explanations doesn’t increase the effectiveness of the time out.  In fact, long discussions may actually be reinforcing because the child is now getting lots of attention .  Thus it may actually decrease the effectiveness of the time out.  However, warnings can significantly increase the effectiveness if combined with a time out.  That is, you give the child a five to ten second grace period.  For example, saying something such as, “You’re not supposed to be doing ___, but you should be working on your math” is a much better statement than just picking the child up and throwing them into a time out situation.  So giving them the opportunity for doing an alternative behavior and then reinforcing that alternative behavior is a much better technique than just placing the child in a time out.  It also dependis upon the situation. 

On slide 29, I’ve basically put to scale the most to least extreme types of time out.  So the most extreme time out within this range is putting the child in a bare room, that is you take the child out of the situation and you put them into an isolated environment where there are no stimuli.  The second type, again, is exclusion.  You put them in a different part of the room.  The third type contingent observation.   Fourth, basically removal the reinforcement stimulus, finally, ignore the person.  Again, the longer the duration, the more stimulation that may occur. 

So, how long should you keep a kid in time out.  This is shown in slide 30.  it can be seconds to hours, but in general the longer the duration, the more suppression of the behavior.  However, there are in essence two general rules that one should kind of follow and these are shown on slide 31.  In general, what you should do is avoid durations that are in excess of what is necessary to decrease the behavior.  Just keeping the organism in an isolated environment isn’t necessarily a good thing.  So, avoiding inadequate or excessive durations that can  increase the behavior is a better.  Make sure that you keep in mind.  So, what I’m saying here within the duration is use some common sense.  If one is trying to change a behavior, even putting a kid in a two minute time out, can be extremely effective and have just as good effectiveness as putting them into a five hour time out.

So in general, these are some aspects of punishment and some variables that influence punishment applications.  Keep them in mind as you’re using these punishment techniques in the future.

In the next section, we’ll begin discussing some side effects of punishment and how those punishing stimuli have major influences on other things.  So until then enjoy your day.