Decreasing Behaviour

Escape and Avoidance Conditioning

Chapter 12:
 Differential reinforcement schedules or procedures are schedules that reinforce
specific rates of responding. They may be used to reinforce high or low response rates.
 Differential reinforcement of low (DRL) rates is a schedule of reinforcement in which
a reinforcer is presented only if a particular response occurs at a low rate.
 One type of DRL, called limited-responding DRL, specifies a maximum allowable
number of responses during a certain time interval in order for a reinforcer to occur.
 Limited-responding DRL is useful when two conditions hold: (a) some of the behavior is
tolerable but (b) less of it is better.
 A second type of DRL, called spaced-responding DRL, requires that a specified
behavior not occur during a specified interval, and after the interval has passed, an
instance of that behavior must then occur in order for a reinforcer to occur.
 In other words, instances of a specific behavior must be spaced out over time. Spaced-
responding DRL is useful when the behavior to be reduced is actually desirable provided
that it does not occur at too high a rate.
 Differential reinforcement of zero responding (DRO) is a schedule in which a
reinforcer is presented only if a specified response does not occur during a specified
period of time. Note that a target response before the interval has passed causes the
timing of the interval to start over again.
 The size of DRO should continue to be increased in this fashion until (a) the behavior is
occurring very rarely or not at all and (b) a minimum amount of reinforcement is being
given for its nonoccurrence.
 If we decide to decrease a target response by withholding reinforcers for it (if we know
their source and block them) and by reinforcing an incompatible response, the schedule is
referred to as differential reinforcement of incompatible (DRI) behavior.
 Suppose you are a grade school teacher who wants to eliminate the running-around-the-
room behavior of one of your students with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. One
possibility would be to put the behavior on a DRO schedule; however, it might be
replaced by an incompatible behavior that is also undesirable—for example, lying on the
floor. To avoid this, you might use DRI instead of DRO by specifying the incom- patible
behavior that is to be reinforced. You might, for example, reinforce sitting quietly. An
even better choice would be completing schoolwork because this behavior is more useful
to the child.
 An alternative to DRI is the differential reinforcement of alternative (DRA) behavior,
which is a procedure that involves the extinction of a problem behavior combined with
reinforcing a behavior that is topo- graphically dissimilar to, but not necessarily
incompatible with, the problem behavior
 Although DRI and DRA have the disadvantage of being more complicated to administer
than simple extinction, they have the advantage of developing new or strengthening old
desirable behavior.
 Overall, Use limited-responding DRL if some of the target behavior is tolerable, but the
less the better.
 Use spaced-responding DRL if the behavior is desirable as long as it does not occur too
rapidly or too frequently.
  Use DRO if the behavior should be eliminated and there is no danger that the DRO
procedure might result in the reinforcement of an undesirable alternative behavior.
 Use DRI or DRA if the behavior should be eliminated and there is a danger that DRO
would strengthen undesirable alternative behavior.

Chapter 13: Punishment

 A punisher is an immediate consequence of an operant behavior that causes that

behavior to decrease in frequency. Punishers are sometimes referred to as aversive
stimuli, or simply aversives.
 Associated with the concept of a punisher is the principle of punishment: If, in a given
situation, someone does something that is immediately followed by a punisher, then that
person is less likely to do the same thing again when she or he next encounters a similar
situation.
 Punishment is defined in 3 ways in behavioral psychology
o It occurs immediately after the problem behavior;
o It is not a form of moral sanction, vengeance, or retribution; I
o It is not used to deter others from engaging in the target behavior.
 Types of Punishers:
o pain-inducing punisher
 The most common type of physical punishers are stimuli that
activate pain receptors which are technically called nociceptors.
 These are nerve endings located throughout the body that detect
pressure, stretching, and temperature changes strong enough to
potentially cause tissue damage, and that, when activated, are
experienced as pain.
 Examples of stimuli that activate these receptors are spankings,
slaps, pinches, hair tugging, extreme cold or heat, very loud sounds,
and electric shocks.
 Such stimuli are called unconditioned punishers, which are stimuli
that are punishing without prior learning. Of course, there are other
stimuli that can cause discomfort without prior learning but that do
not involve nociceptors (e.g., bad smells and tastes). These are also
included as physical punishers.
o Reprimand
 A reprimand is a strong negative verbal stimulus immediately
contingent on behavior.
 An example would be a parent saying, “No! That was bad!”
immediately after a child emits an undesirable behavior.
 Timeout: A timeout is a period of time immediately following a
particular behavior during which an individual loses the opportunity
to earn reinforcers. There are two types of timeout: exclusionary and
nonexclusionary. An exclusionary timeout consists of removing an
individual briefly from a reinforcing situation immediately following
 a behavior.
o A nonexclusionary timeout consists of introducing into the situation,
immediately following a behavior, a stimulus associated with less
reinforcement.
o Children in a classroom wore a ribbon that was removed for a short time
when a child was disruptive. When not wearing the ribbon, the child was
not allowed to participate in classroom activities and was ignored by the
teacher.
o Response Cost:
 Response cost involves the removal of a specified amount of a
reinforcer immediately following a behavior
 Response cost is sometimes used in behavior modification pro-
grams in which learners earn tokens as reinforcers
 In an extinction procedure, a reinforcer is withheld following a
previously reinforced response, whereas in response cost, a
reinforcer is taken away following an undesirable response.
 The direct-acting effect of punishment is the decreased frequency of
a response because of its immediate punishing consequences.
 The indirect-acting effect of punishment is the weakening of a
response that is followed by a punisher even though the punisher is
delayed.
 Factors influencing the Effectiveness of Punishment
o Conditions for a Desirable Alternative response
 To decrease an undesirable response, it is generally considered to be
maximally effective to increase some desirable alternative response
that will compete with the undesirable behavior to be eliminated.
 You should attempt to identify SDs that control the desirable
behavior and present these to increase the likelihood that the
desirable behavior will occur. To maintain the desirable behavior,
you should also have effective positive reinforcers that can be
presented on an effective schedule
o The Cause of the Undesirable behavior
 First, the person should try to identify and eliminate the current S Ds
for the undesirable behavior.
 Second, the person should try to identify and eliminate existing
reinforcers that are maintaining the undesirable behavior.
 Identifying the antecedents and consequences of a behavior is
referred to as a functional assessment
o The Punishing Stimulus
 In general, the more intense or strong the punishing stimulus, the
more effective it will be in decreasing the undesirable behavior.
 However, the intensity of the punisher that is needed to be effective
depends on the success in minimizing the causes of the undesirable
 behavior while maximizing the conditions for a desirable alternative
behavior.
 Rather than selecting just one punisher, it may be more effective to
select several that vary over successive instances of the undesirable
behavior.
o The Antecedents (Including Verbal Rules) for Punishment
o The Delivery of the Punisher
 The punisher should be presented immediately following the
undesirable behavior
 The punisher should be presented following every instance of the
undesirable behavior
 The delivery of the punisher should not be paired with positive
reinforcement
 The person administering the punisher should remain calm when
doing so
 Potential Harmful Side Effects of Punishment
o Aggressive Behaviour
o Emotional Behviour
o Escape and Avoidance Behaviour
o No new Behaviour
o Modeling of Punishment
o Overuse of Punishment

Chapter 14:

 The principle of escape conditioning (also called negative reinforcement) states

that the removal of certain stimuli (called aversive stimuli) immediately after the
occurrence of a behavior will increase the likelihood of that behavior.
 In terms of results, the punishment procedure decreases the likelihood of the target
response of slouching, whereas the escape conditioning procedure increases the
likelihood of the target response of exhibiting good posture.
 Extinction can also occur following escape conditioning (negative reinforcement),
which we will refer to as escape extinction.
 Escape conditioning has the disadvantage that the aversive stimulus must be
present for the desired response to occur.
 The principle of avoidance conditioning is a contingency in which a behavior
prevents an aversive stimulus from occurring thereby resulting in an increase in
the frequency of that behavior.
 However, one difference between escape and avoidance condition- ing is that an
escape response removes an aversive stimulus that has already occurred while an
avoidance response prevents an aversive stimulus from occurring at all.
 Suppose you are walking down the aisle of a shopping mall and someone whom
you dislike steps in front of you and begins talking. You make an excuse that you
are late for an appointment and must leave and you walk away. That is an instance
of escape conditioning because the aversive stimulus was there and you responded
to escape from it. Now suppose that the next day, you are once again walking in
that shopping mall and you see the person whom you dislike come out of a store
some distance away, but that person hasn’t yet seen you. You duck into a store to
avoid that person. That is an instance of avoidance conditioning.
 A second difference between escape and avoidance conditioning is that the latter
often involves a warning stimulus (also called conditioned aversive stimulus),
which is a stimulus that signals a forth- coming aversive stimulus.
 This type of avoidance conditioning, which includes a warning signal that enables
the individual to discriminate a forthcoming aversive stimulus, is called
discriminated avoidance conditioning.