 Hey everyone it's Dr. Veronica Howard. This video is one in a series of videos in which I'm talking about this concept of positive punishment. So if this is the first video that you're watching remember that there are links to some videos in the description. I want to make sure that you understand that there's a previous video that talks about the difference between form and function when we're considering behavior change and talks about some of the common misconceptions about these behavior change procedures. There's also an earlier video where I talk about the history of mental health treatment and especially our prior use of these sort of inhumane behavior deceleration techniques that I think helps contextualize punishment and some of the ways in which we might use punishment in this video. So what we're going to be doing this time around I'm talking exclusively about the procedure of positive punishment. What does it mean and what does it mean when we talk about aversive control? Please if any of these terms are confusing or if you want that primer on what it means about the distinction between form and function or some of the misconceptions that we have before check out those links especially if my use of the term positive when I'm talking about punishment seems a little bit incongruous check those videos out below. Let me switch now so I can show you a little bit of information on screen. Okay so we're talking about understanding punishment. Punishment might better fit within wider categories of what we would call behavior deceleration techniques. These are any strategies that we use to reduce the frequency, the magnitude, the occurrence of target behavior. Punishment also may fit in with a category of behavior change strategies that would be called aversive control. Now many people are familiar with our everyday understanding of the term punishment and when we talk about punishment we usually mean a kind of aversive control that's really designed to reduce behavior. Many times the procedure is incredibly aversive this could be everything ranging from spanking or corporal punishment to prison time to actually the death sentence and all of these may fall within that category so what we're talking about this time around is of course going to be an extremely controversial topic and so what I'm going to ask you to do is just keep an open mind. If you are interested in talking about clients, client behavior change, if you're interested in understanding basic principles of behavior analysis then you need to know about this because unfortunately in our society many of the behavior change procedures that we use to manage functioning, to manage the ways that we communicate with each other, the ways that we live with one another, they're going to be primarily based in aversive control. They're very much do it or else procedures so a good behaviorist, a good behavioral scientist needs to understand aversive control even if they never intend to use it and I would even encourage folks to come at this with an open mind. Now if you are staunchly against the use of punishment great keep an open mind. If you are staunchly for the use of punishment right you think that sometimes people just need a good weapon I'm going to encourage you too to keep an open mind because this video is not about encouraging everyone to use punishment this video is about understanding this principle it's about understanding how this procedure works functionally and talking about what we mean by aversive control. We're also going to be talking in this video about some of the side effects of the use of punishment because anytime you see a behavior change procedure used you are absolutely going to see main effects as well as side effects. So let's begin by talking about what we mean here in aversive control we are talking about a stimulus from which a person will actively escape or avoid right aversive stimuli are things that people will work to get away from this could range from anything like mosquito bite which is incredibly itchy so when the mosquito lands on you you hit it you kill it could be a poor score on an exam you work you study so that you avoid getting that poor score could be getting robbed or getting mugged right so here's my one nod to batman in this case what we're talking about is you avoid things like dark alleys you avoid places where you may experience predation from from muggers or criminals to make sure that you're safe this could be things like calling the campus police so that you get an escort to your car at night so that you're safe and so we work to escape or avoid unpleasant stimuli now did I say that an aversive stimulus is necessarily an unpleasant stimulus no because again we're going back to form versus function and we only know whether a stimulus is aversive by the effects that it's going to produce in the organism it's something that a person is going to escape or avoid fitting within our larger paradigm of behavior change procedures we've talked before about positive reinforcement it's not necessarily a reward it's a consequence that is delivered contingent on a behavior and the future rate of that behavior increases now in this case we're adding in this idea of behavior decreasing so the procedure we're talking around about this time around is positive punishment or it might be easier to understand it as punishment by contingent stimulation this means that the target behavior occurs a stimulus is added that's the positive part the stimulus is added following the behavior the future likelihood of the behavior decreases punishment in behavior analysis means behavior decreases positive means stimulus was added okay now when we talk about punishment and we're defining this functionally we have to be aware that we were looking for three things first of all did the behavior decrease in the future if a stimulus was added or when we talk about in the future if a stimulus was removed and the probability of the behavior decreases then it's punisher then it's a punisher it's a punishing stimulus we're not necessarily conflating harm or unpleasantness with its effectiveness as a punisher because remember we're talking about form versus function something that you and I consider unpleasant may not function as a punisher something that you and I consider unpleasant may in fact function as a reinforcer for people so for instance there there are some circumstances under which you can pay a person to provide a aversive control where where they may for instance when you get a deep tissue massage and it hurts like hell when you're getting it done but we pay for that right so we're not actively escaping or avoiding that we're actually seeking that out you find that punishment may also not necessarily include things like adding in stimuli that people escape or avoid it can also mean adding in events that people will will escape avoid so reprimanding someone could function as a punisher could function as a reinforcer for other individuals depending on their learning history adding in extra chores or asking a person to complete the assignment again to to re-complete the task could be a form of punishment you also find that temporarily removing reinforcers can be punishing but again in this case removing refers to a procedure we haven't learned yet that's removing something is negative it's taking it out so what i want you to be aware of is when we say punishment don't necessarily jump to the conclusion that we're talking about corporal punishment don't think that we're talking about what your parents probably described as there will be consequences punishment refers to a stimulus that when delivered or removed contingent on a behavior reduces the behavior in the future this also means that idiosyncratically we may find things that we think are really pleasant but if you give them to people they're less likely to engage in the behavior in the future if you're very shy and someone calls on you in class and praises your good work you may work hard to avoid ever being called on again you may be less likely to engage in the target behavior and so that praise that thing that i think is going to be a reinforcer functionally was a punisher for you because stimulus was added contention on the behavior behavior decreased in the future those are the hallmarks there now unfortunately any behavior change procedure is going to have side effects but the side effects of punishment are pretty severe and what you typically see reported side effects of punishment include things like emotional responses when a person experiences punishment when they experience things like critical feedback if they if they serve as a punisher you see a lot of side effects you see people break down they might even start crying like you see here you see that in the future the person who delivered the punishing stimulus may be avoided by the person who's experienced the punisher in the future so for instance you submit work that is unpleasant your professor says to you uh this does not meet the criteria for the for this do it again uh you may be less likely to go see your your professor in the future right you may avoid the person who gave you punishment uh and you might see a thing that we call behavioral contrast so if i've managed to effectively use punishment to decrease the problem behavior here say in my classroom then you might see that that behavior actually increases in frequency in other classes so decreases in professor howard's class but increases dramatically in professor smith's class so that can be really problematic right because if if one professor doesn't like it i could guarantee i'd bet money that another one doesn't but what about younger children i decrease the problem behavior at school what happens when i see an increase in the problem behavior it's at at home that could be intensely problematic we also see other side effects like the the client engaging in aggression or a form of counter control so this could be things like you know i'm going to use spanking or i'm going to use caning to control the behavior of this client i'm going to deliver that that stimulus contingent on the problem behavior well what happens when my client actually stands up and takes that cane for me beats me with it right there have been times when people will do that when they fight back so we see that it's common for a person who's about to experience punishment or about to experience an aversive stimulus that they could rise up and they will do anything to escape or avoid that stimulus they could aggress against the person delivering the punisher it could be for instance that you spank a young child and as they're running away they punch you and run off right that's counter control we also see that it becomes this kind of insidious relationship so we talked before about how when you use punishment people may avoid you because now you're we'll talk about this term later you become a punisher yourself because you've delivered the punisher but what happens when punishment works for you when you use punishment what are you going to do we repeat behavior that pays off for us so it's actually incredibly reinforcing to use aversive control it pays off immediately when you say to a kid hey cut it out and they don't cut it out and you give them a whop on the bottom they are going to probably stop immediately doing whatever it was you told them not to so for the person using the punishment procedure it's incredibly reinforcing which means they're more likely to skip right to punishment again in the future they're more likely to repeat and use punishment with other clients and across a bunch of different learners and stimuli so punishment is not only harmful for the person who's experiencing the punishment procedure punishment can be dangerous insofar as it's so reinforcing for the person using it so now me the behavior change agent who found that that punishment was effective i may in the future just boom go right to punishment which means all of the things that we're going to talk about in the next video the ethics of the use of punishment what you want to consider before using punishment becomes really really challenging uh this procedure again when we're talking about the functional use of punishment we're talking about behavior occurs stimulus is added for positive punishment or stimulus is removed for positive punishment or negative punishment and the behavior decreases in the future if you have questions about this procedure please leave a comment below check out the other videos where i talk about the difference between form and function and some misconceptions here and when you're analyzing these these vignettes look very very carefully for are you seeing the behavior increase or decrease and what's happening if a stimulus is added following behavior and behavior decreases that's positive punishment look forward to your comments and i'll see you next time